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By MARC FREEMAN
Sun Sentinel
Updated: 9:13 a.m. Friday, May 28, 2010
Posted: 8:17 a.m. Friday, May 28, 2010
Wearing a shiny gold cap and gown, Rachel West walked on stage Thursday afternoon to address her graduating class, relatives and friends, and receive her diploma.
But this commencement — the final one of the 2010 high school graduation season in Palm Beach County — might as well have been a world away from the traditional ceremonies held at the convention center.
Here, in the windowless cafeteria of Indian Ridge School, West and six other graduates celebrated their exit from a special education facility for severely emotionally disturbed students. The school serves 105 students from kindergarten through age 22 who are unable to be placed in traditional classrooms.
"It is going to be hard for me to leave Indian Ridge, a school that has helped me so much in my life," said West, 18, of Belle Glade.
She attended the school west of West Palm Beach for the past nine years, long enough for Principal Sherri Kelty to call her "my Indian Ridge daughter." Kelty is completing her ninth year in charge of the campus at the corner of Okeechobee Boulevard and Benoist Farms Road.
"She's worked really hard here," Kelty said of West, noting how the once-misbehaving student "had her moments" but persevered and soon will enter Palm Beach State College to study child care.
West glanced at Kelty during her remarks and said, "You gave me hope. You gave me everything so I could believe in me."
And then she looked to her graduating class and shouted, "We did
