Mikey finally did it! He graduated from High School and we are very proud of him. Mike's classes all had competitive grading and he had to work quite hard. He did very well and maintained a 3.8 GPA for his Senior Year.
We were debating whether or not he would graduate this year. Because of his autism diagnosis he is eligible to stay in High School if there are still IEP (individual education plan) goals for him to achieve. We considered having him stay in High School to have the school system pay to place him in a vocationally oriented school called EVIT (East Valley Institute of Technology). They have a program in Film Making/Media that Mikey was quite interested in. In talking with the school, it appeared that EVIT would not accept Mike coming there through the school system. (It turned out later that their advice was complete baloney, but we didn't know that at the time) Anyway, with that information there didn't seem any real reason to keep him in High School and he was definitely interested in experiencing the graduation experience with his class and so we agreed to let him graduate. He was very proud going through the ceremony and so were we. Lots of "thank you's" to all of you for your cards and congratulations for Mikey. Here are some pictures of his big day.
