Graduation honors teacher

COSTA MESA — Richard Hoff observed his last graduation Thursday as an Orange Coast Middle College High School teacher. He couldn’t have gone out on a better note.

Hoff, who will retire this month, is the last remaining faculty member from Middle College’s charter year in 1996. Over the last decade, he’s watched the student body expand and test scores rise — and on Thursday, for the first time, he presided over a class in which every graduating senior was headed to college.

“I believe that I am a man truly blessed for having had this experience,” Hoff said in a brief speech during the commencement ceremony, which the school dedicated especially to him.

At 3 p.m. in OCC’s science hall, school board members and district administrators joined the celebration for this year’s Middle College staff. The graduation marked the first that Supt. Jeffrey Hubbard has attended since taking Newport-Mesa’s helm.

Middle College, the smallest site in the Newport-Mesa Unified School District, covers the 11th and 12th grades, and allows students to take classes at Orange Coast College while finishing their high school requirements.

This year, the school posted some remarkable numbers. For the fourth year in a row, according to Principal Bob Nanney, Middle College saw 100% of its senior class graduate.

And on the odder side, it may have been the most lopsided Newport-Mesa graduation ever in terms of gender — of the 41 Middle College seniors this year, a whopping 34 were girls. Nanney, who said middle-college campuses often attracted more female students, plans to spend part of the coming months figuring out why.

“We’re going to be discussing this over the summer at the Middle College National Consortium,” he said.

Regardless, students said Middle College — with its small class sizes and campus tucked in a corner of OCC — felt like a second family to them.

“You know everybody in your whole school, which you don’t normally do,” said Anna Jordan, 17.