Class of 2013: East High Seniors March for Destiny

To the stately strains of "Pomp and Circumstance," 345 Brookfield East High School seniors marched Sunday afternoon into the their gymnasium, hung with state sports championship banners, to embark upon adult life.

Just over 300 more from Brookfield Central had done the same, in the same gymnasium – East played host to both – earlier Sunday morning.

Thus, nearly 650 newly minted Brookfield Public Schools graduates, and as many extended families, the parents, grandparents, siblings, aunts and uncles, friends and well-wishers, bade farewell and godspeed after 13 years of preparation dating back to kindergarten.

More than a million minutes in class since then came down to this, and School Superintendent Mark Hansen, delivering just his second high school commencement address at East – his first only four hours earlier at Central – reminded the graduates that they had not just made it through school, they had made it through among the most rigorous programs in the state of Wisconsin.

Despite the great demands upon them, he said, they measured up and then some. Around half of them ranked as honors graduates. Dozens were named to the National Honors Society. About 98 percent of all who began would graduate, and of those, some 93 percent would go on to an institution of higher learning.

Between both schools, East and Central, nearly $2.5 million in scholarships would send them on their way.

The academic achievement numbers between Brookfield's high schools are meaningless fractions of points apart, really, but East senior Christine Shi, in her address to her Class of 2013, couldn't help a little braggadocio in making a persuasive argument that not only was her class the best Brookfield East could produce – it was the best Brookfield could produce.

"This is why our ACT scores are higher than Central's," she asserted.

But really, it's just by fractions.