Manson Mesa celebrates first graduating class

PAGE, Ariz.

It was a very special day Thursday for Manson Mesa High School, the new school in the Page Unified School District.

Family and friends watched as Ryan Tkalcevic, the school’s principal, presented diplomas and a handshake to four students, Dylan Dallas, Isaac Draper, Skylar Leroi Goatson, and Miranda Star Hardiek — the first-ever graduating class.

“Graduation is a celebration of hard work and goals attained over 12 years in the education system,” Tkalcevic said before the reading of names Thursday night at the PUSD district office governing boardroom.

PUSD superintendent Robert Varner said it was really an exciting night for the school district.

“We’re so proud of (the students),” he said. “We’re so proud of Manson Mesa as part of our district.”

Varner said about a year ago, Manson Mesa High was just a dream by a number of people, including former superintendent Jim Walker, assistant superintendent Kelly Glass, Page High principal Paul Gagnon, and members of the PUSD governing board.

“And now it’s an actual school,” said Sharon Woodard, the student support services coordinator at MMHS. “It was exciting to see the name go up on the side of the building—- It really was.”

But a project such as a new school, Woodard said, is a risk.

“It’s a risk to take a young principal and teaming him with veteran teachers, which totally works,” she said. “It’s really happening and it’s exciting.”

In front of more than 50 people in September, members of the governing board, MMHS staff, along with the approximately 34 students enrolled, had a ribbon-cutting ceremony to introduce the school to the community.

Varner at that time presented two plaques that now hang in the halls of the school, one commemorating the day of the ceremony as well as the inaugural staff and the other recognizing Manson Chishie Yazzie, a local Diné sheepherder for whom the school is named.

Unlike other towns in Northern Arizona, the town of Page was founded in 1957 as a housing community for workers and their families (Government Camp) during the construction of the Glen Canyon Dam on the Colorado River.

According to history, the site was obtained in a land exchange with the Navajo Nation. Seventeen square miles of tribal land was traded for what is now the Aneth Oil Fields in southeastern Utah.

Because Yazzie and his family at that point in time had grazing rights to Manson Mesa (also named after Yazzie), where this town now sits, he met with officials from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation prior to the construction of the dam to give them the lay of the land.

To honor Yazzie’s family and their contribution to the town, PUSD named this alternative school, which focuses on students who have fallen significantly behind in their overall course credits, after him.

Yazzie was born in the late 1880s, according to the 1940 Census. He died Oct. 2, 1976.

“It’s astonishing to see the school É named after my grandfather,” said Tyler Manson, a 2006 alumnus of Page High who was the honor speaker.

The night ended as Manson and two others gave advice to the graduates.

Manson quoted Chief Manuelito’s famous statement about education.

“With modern education and with traditional education, with those two methods put together, then you’re able to climb that ladder,” Manson said. “If you put those two methods together É you will climb that ladder and there’s nothing to stop you.”

Woodard also told the students, “Remember people math: Always know the difference between É someone who’s adding or multiplying to your life.”