America Together: Texas principal travels 1,500 miles to honor each of his graduating seniors

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Class of 2020 college graduates face changed world

Grads navigating dismal job market amid pandemic; national correspondent William La Jeunesse reports from Los Angeles.

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They couldn’t receive their diplomas on stage because of the coronavirus outbreak, so he brought the graduation to them instead.

A Texas high school principal traveled 1,500 miles over a 10-day period to congratulate each of his 240 seniors personally at their homes.

“One of our core values at our school is to ignite joy,” Scott Rudes, who is in charge of Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts in Dallas, told KDFW. “And that is what I saw on the faces of my seniors and their families. Just a few minutes of joy in the midst of all this uncertainty.”

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Rudes said he made the trip in his car. Videos of his appearances, which include him dancing with seniors and handing a diploma to one as she traveled head-first down a water slide – are now making the rounds on social media.

“I think it started with the fact that I am the father of a senior and I feel it,” he told KDFW. “I feel the anguish and the sadness over missing out on a lot of activities at the end of the year.”

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In another message to senior students, Rudes said, “Whatever presents in life, find the opportunity with that and run with it."

He continued: “That’s one of the things I think we do best at a school like ours with artists, to teach them to view the world from multiple perspectives and to be creative and expressive,” he said. “I think that’s what gets them through the hard times.”