Fontbonne celebrates Class of 2015 with graduation, church liturgy

June 9, 2015 Brooklyn Daily Eagle

Fontbonne Hall Academy’s valedictorian is Michel Fallah (right). The salutatorian is Andrea Arcadipane (left). Photo courtesy Fontbonne Hall Academy

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Fontbonne Hall Academy changed its graduation tradition this year to include not just commencement exercises but a liturgy in a church.

The 129 members of the Class of 2015 of Fontbonne, a Catholic high school for girls located on Shore Road in Bay Ridge, wore white gowns and carried red roses at their Commencement Exercises at the Basilica of Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Sunset Park on June 6. The white gowns and roses are a tradition at the school, which was founded in 1937.

Two days before the ceremony, Fontbonne held a graduation liturgy at Saint Patrick Church in Bay Ridge, where the girls wore blue graduation caps and gowns.

Valedictorian Michel Fallah will be attending the Macaulay Honors College at Brooklyn College in the fall. Salutatorian Andrea Arcadipane will be attending Northeastern University.

The Class of 2015 earned over $17 million in scholarships, according to school officials.

Sponsored by the Sisters of St. Joseph of Brentwood, a Catholic religious order, Fontbonne Hall Academy has been educating young women for the 78 years.

Fontbonne offers a rigorous college preparatory curriculum that includes Advanced Placement classes that students can take as early as ninth grade. The school has established a Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) curriculum with emphasis on project-based learning. The STEM curriculum also includes a Science Research Program, a three-year sequence of classes that begins in the tenth grade, along with several AP science classes and electives such as a pre-college engineering program with Brown University.

There is also an introductory course in the physical sciences for all ninth-grade students.