Malik Makes The Deadline

Most parents know what to expect on Graduation Day. But the mother of a New Horizons High School student wasn’t sure — even on the morning of the ceremony — if her son would get his diploma on Tuesday.

Her son, Malik James, had revived his scholastic career following a slide induced by his best friend’s murder. But he still needed to pass one more test to make up the missing credits.

James, once a popular football player with good grades at Hillhouse High School, enrolled at the alternative high school last November, after he nearly dropped out of New Haven’s public schools.

The 17-year-old from West River had been unable to cope with the murder of best friend and classmate Jacob Craggett, who was gunned down in August 2014 while sitting in a car in the Hill. James stopped showing up for class. He suffered from depression and anxiety attacks.

Then he got to New Horizons, which provides an intimate, personalized learning experience to help 102 of the district’s most troubled students get back on track. James passed the test — scoring an 89 percent, he joyfully informed his mother in an afternoon phone call — and graduated Tuesday evening with five other students.

The group had survived unthinkable traumas, from being raped as a grade-schooler to watching a friend commit suicide, to get to the stage at the Betsy Ross magnet school parish hall on Kimberly Avenue.

With some last-minute cramming until 3 a.m., passing his last test had been the easy part for James.

In a unique commencement ceremony Tuesday evening, New Horizons didn’t line up a keynote speaker. Instead, each student spoke to the audience of their teachers and families.

“Everybody here got a story. Everybody has a struggle that they went through,” James began in his speech. ​“But I want to be the one to go out and talk about it and be open about it. Because it’s something that’s real deep to me and something that I feel should be shared.”

James said that he had breezed through school, up until his sophomore year.

“I had it all at Hillhouse: I was an honor student, I had colleges calling the house wanting to set meetings up with me and my family. I had my family behind me and the girl everyone wanted,” he said. ​“I thought I’d be the one to take my family out of New Haven.”

But after Craggett’s death, the trauma weighed on James. His attitude got him kicked off the football team at the start of junior year. His grades declined, and he started playing hooky. James rebuffed the university recruiters, who kept calling, because he couldn’t find the words to explain his situation to them.

A survivor’s guilt pained James deeply. ​“I felt like [Craggett] would have done more in his life than I could ever do in mine. I really felt like he deserved to live and not me,” he recalled.

After breaking up with his girlfriend last June, James suffered from an anxiety attack. He was hospitalized for two and a half weeks, he recounted with long pauses Tuesday night as the audience cheered him on, whispering, ​“Take your time.” James’s parents stood in the aisle, tears in their eyes, and filmed the speech on a smartphone.

James recovered and said he started seeking help in time for his senior year. But no school wanted to accept him, due to his frequent tardiness during the first months of the marking period.

At the time, James pondered dropping out. ​“I had it in my mind that I was done with school. Or maybe school was done with me,” he said.

He went on to thank the alternative school for not giving up on him. ​“I feel like I owe New Horizons so much, because they took a chance on a kid that no other school would even evaluate or possibly take a chance with. I never really said it aloud, but New Horizons saved my life. And for that, I sit here and I go out as a student from New Horizons, not Hillhouse.”