Co-Op High School | Culture & Community | Education & Youth | Arts & Culture
Top: Strings student Mathais-Li Nuñez, who managed to sneak a small confetti canon in beneath his graduation robes. Bottom: Future fire scientist and first responder Carizma Buonome, who carried the memory of her brother, Jericho Scott, with her as she crossed the stage. Lucy Gellman Photos.
Jericho Scott never got the chance to walk across a stage for his high school graduation. So when it was her turn, his younger sister made sure he was with her every step of the way.
Monday, proud sister Carizma Buonome honored Scott’s memory at the Shubert Theatre, as Cooperative Arts & Humanities High School graduated 116 seniors and bid farewell to beloved arts educators Harriett Alfred and Pat Smith. For Buonome—and so many others at the school—it marked a bittersweet day, in which joy and celebration lived alongside the grief of that which is left unfinished.
The Co-Op community is also saying goodbye to Assistant Principal and Arts Director Amy “Ms. Miggs” Migliore, who was abruptly transferred to Betsy Ross Arts Magnet School (BRAMS) last week. She will be helping with its transition to Betsy Ross Arts and Design Academy (BRADA) later this year.
Top: Harriett Alfred, who has taught at the school for 38 years, leads choir students into the Shubert for the last time. Bottom: Caden Davila-Sanabria crosses the stage.
“Welcome class of 2025—a class of trailblazers, artists and young people who have grown up before my very eyes,” said Migliore, whose remarks were delayed by almost a full minute of cheering, applause, and nicknames she has earned from students (“Auntie Miggs” may be the most catchy). “You arrived to us like blank canvases, and you are leaving us as unfinished masterpieces.”
That celebration began well before 1 p.m., as the school’s cafeteria hummed with seniors in their gem-colored caps and gowns, sorted by arts discipline for one last time. As teachers floated around, helping fasten caps, tie up hair and re-fit bobby pins, conversation rose and fell over the tables. A few student rocked homemade stoles and bright honors cords, celebrating far-away home countries, academic distinctions, college acceptances and affinity groups.
Buonome, a theater student who is headed to the University of New Haven (UNH) in the fall, displayed a stole printed with a picture of her brother Jericho, a junior at Wilbur Cross High School who was shot and killed in Fair Haven 10 years ago this April. When it happened, Buonome was just seven, and didn’t completely understand what was going on.
“As I got older, I started to understand it more,” she said—including the fact that her brother’s premature death would forever influence the way she lived her life.
Top: Valedictorian Cassandra Clermont, who is headed to Cornell in the fall. Bottom: Kyarah Casanova, who prefers simply Casanova. "I learned that creative writers aren't quiet," Casanova said.
In the decade since, Buonome grew up. When Covid-19 hit in 2020—five years after her brother’s death—she was a student at Conte West Hills Magnet School, where the pandemic meant that “we barely had an eighth grade graduation,” she said. When she started at Co-Op, she tried to find what made her tick, and ultimately realized that theater was part of the answer.
At the school, an arts magnet that can sometimes feel a little like the musical FAME, “I found myself,” she said. Through theater teachers like Rob Esposito and Christi Sargent, she learned how to be more extroverted and independent. She explored her passion for helping people, with the realization that she wanted to study fire science and become a first responder. Last year, she also turned her grief into power, advocating for stronger gun reforms before the 2024 election.
Jericho was and is with her for all of that, she said: “In everything I do, I carry him with me.” So when she made it to graduation this spring, there wasn’t a question about who would be with her on that stage. Her sister Sahara, who graduated from Cross in 2019, had done the same.
“My brother was 16, and he didn’t get to graduate before he passed,” she said. “I know he’s, like, really proud of me.”
Top: Justin Stephen Reilly with fellow visual arts students. Bottom: Dancer Simcere Shields embraces Migliore.
She added that he’s one of the reasons she wants to dedicate her life to helping others, and specifically to fire science. The night Jericho died, every first responder she met was gentle with her, kind and delicate as they tried to explain what was happening. A decade later, she still thinks of many of the police that responded as her uncles. In college, she wants to use that experience to help other New Haveners.
She’s not done with the arts, she added: she plans to minor in theater at UNH. The discipline has taught her that through different roles, “you can be multiple people” at once—all while learning new lessons from each character.
Around her, fellow students took the moment to pose with each other for photos, exchange last-minute secrets, run over written remarks, and dance it out between the lunch tables. In the hallway, otherwise quiet enough to hear a pin drop, three friends posed for a selfie, giggling when art teacher Erin Michaud walked by.
Top: Janie Alexander, who is a kind of tech theater mom to every student. Bottom: Jordyn Thomas, who took an extra year after the sudden passing of her friend, dancer Camryn Gayle.
It was nearly time to head to the Shubert, and for a moment, the cafeteria was a freeze frame, in which nobody totally wanted to leave. On one end of the room, tech theater teacher Janie Alexander helped a student with her cap, in a kind of coordinated ballet that has become part of her work in the theater. On the other, Principal Paul Camarco checked in with a few students, weaving through the crowd before he slipped on a cap and gown himself.
As she burst through the room’s entrance, senior Caden Davila-Sanabria suggested that moment—that palpable, excitement-tinged hesitation—was because the transition could feel like a scary one, even to students who were ready.
“I’ve never not gone to school [in New Haven] before,” said Davila-Sanabria, a creative writer who made the theater department her second home. Growing up in the city, Davila-Sanabria went to preschool in Westville, and has spent the rest of her time in the New Haven Public Schools. When she heads to Bard College in the fall, it will mark the first time she’s part of a private school since before kindergarten. She doesn’t know what to expect.
And yet, she said, Co-Op has also prepared her for that future. Somewhere between hands-on actor visits, homework assignments, and dramaturgy, “I’ve learned how to be a real person,” she said. “I’m definitely doing what I want to do how I want to do it. I’m not fitting into any boxes.”
Top: Ali'jah Steed, who graduated alongside his twin brother, Aaron.
Across the cafeteria, Justin Stephen Reilly adjusted his cap, from which a glowing, mountainous landscape erupted in bursts of brown and white, dotted with dozens of tiny, honeyed lights. A student in the visual arts department, he was inspired by the tradition of lantern releases, which he learned about in his art history classes with teacher Erin Michaud.
In the past four years, he said, Co-Op has taught him skills that are as intrapersonal as they are academic. For instance, he’s spent a lot of time at the Yale University Art Gallery, and also learned “ways to engage with other people who I otherwise wouldn’t have gotten to know.”
The sculpture on his cap, complete with a Triple A battery pack wrapped inside a construction paper mountain, felt like an homage to that personal transformation. After high school, he plans to attend CT State Gateway for Visual Art.
“Certainly I’ve learned a lot of humility,” he said. “Every one has some chance to put themselves out there.”
“Art Lives Inside of You”
Top: Migliore. Bottom: Students wave their phones during a serenade from Harriett Alfred.
That balancing act—of holding the sweet with the bitter, the present with the future—followed seniors to the Shubert, as students filed into the theater to the sound of Edward Elgar’s “Pomp and Circumstance” played by the strings department.
In the rows and rows of shimmering, ruby red caps and gowns, there were dozens of stories: of creative writers who found their voice in the pages of the student publication Metamorphosis, of student soloists who dazzled both in school and outside the classroom, of theater kids who rocked the all-school musical and saw senior year through to honor a best friend gone too soon.
As teachers, administrators and student speakers came forward to address the class, many acknowledged how extraordinary the past four years have been. Not only has high school challenged them academically, said Principal Paul Camarco: it’s challenged many of them personally. As they move on to college, trade school, pre-nursing, military service, and professional training, he encouraged each of them to invest in themselves.
“You’ve faced challenges, setbacks, and uncertainty, but you’ve adapted, you’ve persevered,” he said, adding that it is ok—and even necessary—to ask for help. “You kept showing up, and that perseverance is the foundation of self-investment.”
Top: Salutatorian Eva Berthelot-Hill, who is headed to UConn. Bottom: Creative writer Joanna Perez with her mom, brother, and dad. "I've opened up a lot" through her writing, she said.
Both salutatorian Eva Berthelot-Hill and valedictorian Cassandra Cleremont (her sibling, 2023 valedictorian Adi Clermont, is studying computer science at Boston University) echoed that message, encouraging their classmates to remain curious—and obsessed with the love of learning, rather than perceived rank or status—and also know when to lean on other people.
But it was Migliore who captured the afternoon’s full range of feeling, delivering an impassioned appeal for the arts and for their young practitioners at a time when they are under attack in both New Haven and across the country. This month, New Haven Public Schools teachers are bracing for potential cuts to the arts as part of a larger “rightsizing” at the district, in which 129 student-facing educators risk losing their jobs. That includes 29 arts educators and 25 library and media specialists, according to an April 2025 presentation from NHPS Superintendent Madeline Negrón.
Migliore didn’t address the looming cuts, or pull data showing that the arts boost social and emotional development, or reference her own impending transfer. Instead, she showed attendees the impact that the arts have in real time, shouting out both the students and the teachers who make Co-Op what it is. Looking out into the rows and rows of faces, she singled out Kemaya Richardson-Francis, whose capstone project built on artists William Merritt Chase, Winslow Homer, and Berthe Morisot to channel childhood nostalgia.
She praised Davila-Sanabria, whose tight, whip-smart writing could make a person second guess whether she’d already finished high school. She looked to Marangelie Colón, who plans to study secondary education at Southern Connecticut State University, who made the school feel enchanted when she stepped onto the stage as the baker’s wife in Stephen Sondheim’s Into The Woods earlier this year.
Migliore also looked to each department, taking time to thank Smith and Alfred for building out a vibrant music program. She noted how every year, the dance department seems to get better, just when she thinks that students can't top the previous year's performance. She lauded the senior theater show, written by Co-Op alum Keona Marie Gomes, and the class’ ability to deliver constructive feedback to underclassmen.
She reflected on the joy and rigor of the all-school musical, and the way Smith insisted that teachers and students could do it when doubt crept in. In the final performance, she had a cameo as Sleeping Beauty.
“Do not let challenges deter you from taking risks,” she said. “Do not let challenges deter you from taking risks. From being a woman who was afraid to speak in public to who I am today, I can assure you that life is worth living when you take risks, transform who you are and become who you are meant to be.”
“Art lives inside of you,” she added before asking students to close their eyes and imagine what makes an artist. “Whatever your journey, you will always have an art foundation. You are the pages, the chapter, of a magnificent book. Chapters end, but the book continues.”
Educator Ryan Minezzi, who chairs the school’s art department, followed in those footsteps as he urged students to speak truth to power as they go out into the world. Looking to “the great philosopher Bob the Builder,” best known for the lines “Can we fix it?”/”Yes we can!” He encouraged them to “use our art to build, to restore, to create communities.”
That’s true on the school level too, he added before calling graduates to the stage. When these young artists are in the field “and you’re asked to rightsize, look deeper.”