LODI — As Gemar Mills stood on the auditorium stage, in front of 85 students wearing caps and gowns, he thanked them.

For Mills, this graduation was proof that his success as principal at Newark’s Malcolm X Shabazz High School was no fluke and he could build a school with a culture of achievement from the ground up in his own hometown.

“All of the things we dreamed and saw when we began this journey — you all made it real for us,” Mills said Monday at a graduation ceremony for the first graduating class of College Achieve Paterson.

Dubbed the “Covid Class” after surviving the social isolation of at-home learning during the pandemic, this graduating class achieved something remarkable — all of them had gained acceptance to a four-year college.

College Achieve’s first graduating class

As the first high-school class to graduate from College Achieve Paterson, a charter school founded in 2013 with two elementary school grades, this was not only a victory for these teenagers, but for Mills as well.

Over the years, College Achieve expanded and now teaches children from kindergarten through 12th grade. The only thing the school still lacks at their Market Street location is an auditorium, forcing the graduation to take place at nearby Albin Obal Hall at Felician University.

“I didn’t grow up in a faraway place — I grew up in Paterson in the Christopher Columbus Project,” Mills said. “Some parents had said they sent their children to this school because they knew I grew up where they came from.”

On the morning after College Achieve’s commencement, Mayor Andre Sayegh announced that Paterson Charter School of Science and Technology achieved a similar milestone, with every graduate getting accepted to a two-year or four-year college.

Officials from Paterson Public Schools have stated over the years that the city’s charters have an advantage in achieving success in terms of student performance, partly because they do not enroll as many special needs pupils and English Language Learners. Moreover, Paterson school board members said, parents who enroll their children in charters tend to be more involved in the their youngsters’ education.

Mike Piscal, who founded College Achieve with money from his retirement fund, handpicked Mills when he was one of the standout educators in the state. Mills took over Newark’s Malcolm X Shabazz High School at a time when chaos and violence ran rampant through the hallways. The former math teacher, at age 27, managed to pull back the public school from the brink of closure.

Perhaps the best endorsement of Mills’s approach to education is that several administrators, including Sharon Cook, followed him from Shabazz to College Achieve.

“I saw the turnaround and I believed in his dream,” said Cook, who is the charter school’s director of operations.

One of the reasons for the school’s success is that Mills empowers teachers to be leaders, according to Eugene Reed, community relations specialist at the school. That combined with weekly training sessions for his faculty helps growing in their profession. “

Anyone can tell you what to do and give you directions,” Reed said. “But someone who can teach you to lead is a special person.”

One of those out-of-the-box faculty members is Chris Kopitar, a founding teacher, who said something “clicked” when he first met Mills in 2013. Kopitar boasts that he doesn’t “teach from a book,” but instead uses artifacts, such as Civil War bullets and World War II military helmets. “I can’t see myself anywhere else,” Kopitar said. “He still inspires me when I see him talk.”

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Understanding Paterson’s challenges

During the graduation ceremony, Mills told a story about how police searched his home at the Christopher Columbus Projects when he was 12 years old. The cops pointed a gun at him and smashed statues as they combed the apartment for drugs, he said.

“I know this is an extreme story but one I wanted to share because sometimes people see me and don’t realize I had that experience — or that I went through these kinds of trials and tribulations,” Mills said. “But somehow, I still managed to be on this stage and be on this microphone right now.”

The story sounded similar to something Reed said earlier that day — that growing up in a city like Paterson — where only 12% of parents have college degrees — students are often more focused on merely “surviving” their surroundings.

“When you’re in this type of environment, your focus is on survival.” Reed said. “We’re trying to teach them that with education, you have the power to unlock many doors.”

Shiqira Freeman — the mother of Xavier Poulson, who got a full-ride scholarship to Montclair State University — said that knowing Gills is from Paterson and overcame the same obstacles they did, is part of how he inspires his students.

Today, parents like Freeman couldn’t imagine their children having gone anywhere else.

“To see a young Black male accomplish what he accomplished at such a young age,” said Freeman, who grew up in the Alabama projects. “It’s fantastic to see that kind of representation – our son had to come here.”

One of the students that Mills inspired was Ibn Giles, who overcame struggles in his freshman year to gain college acceptance to the business school at William Paterson University.

“When high school first started, I was getting in trouble,” Giles said. “Dr. Mills gave me a second chance when I really needed it — he helped me change my outlook.”

Darren Tobia is a contributing writer for Paterson Press.

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Paterson NJ: College Achieve graduates all accepted to college