On Thursday, May 21, 2026, the community of the Berkeley High School Multilingual Program (MLP) gathered at Oxford Elementary School for their graduation. May and June are filled with graduation events for small schools, ethnic groups, and other programs. However, the MLP graduation is unique, as it highlights graduates from MLP \u2014 not all of whom are seniors \u2014 who have reached a level of English proficiency sufficient for their entrance into \u201cmainstream classes.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Many of the students in the program believe they will return to it as they navigate the rest of high school. \u201cI\u2019ll still be in contact with the program. They helped me a lot, and so I\u2019m very grateful to them,\u201d BHS junior Aisanda Hidalgo Iglesias said, who is graduating from the program\u2019s final level, English Language Development 4 (ELD 4.)<\/p>\n
The night was guided by two students: Iglesias and BHS sophomore Fatima Justo Hermenegildo, who has not yet graduated from the program. \u201cI feel really happy for (the graduates) because it\u2019s a really big thing for us to recognize that we know how to speak English well,\u201d Justo Hermenegildo said.<\/p>\n
The program featured heartwarming speeches from BHS sophomore Sebastian Matias Hidalgo Pe\u00f1a and senior Jeffrey Gadiel Flores Escalante. Hidalgo Pe\u00f1a thanked the MLP program profusely. \u201cThe reason why I\u2019m talking here is MLP,\u201d Hidalgo Pe\u00f1a said in his speech.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Flores Escalante delivered his speech in Spanish, but he repeated it in English after. He spoke movingly of pride, family, and accomplishment gained from the program.<\/p>\n
Brandalyn Estefania Martin Aguilar, who graduated ELD 4 that night, said, \u201cIt\u2019s been a long journey since I came to the United States. When I started Berkeley High I was put in MLP \u2026 now I\u2019m graduating and I feel proud of myself.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On Thursday, May 21, 2026, the community of the Berkeley High School Multilingual Program (MLP) gathered at Oxford…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":348483,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[143,145,144],"class_list":["post-348482","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348482","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=348482"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348482\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/348483"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=348482"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=348482"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=348482"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}