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The ceremony is scheduled for 5 p.m. At 3:30 Saturday, Nanakuli High School graduates are just beginning to arrive with their families. Cars and trucks painted with congratulatory notes roll past the white sheet spray-painted with “Congrats 2010 Seniors” at the entrance to the campus.

Kaulana Kaeha is one of the early arrivals and is already in his robe and honor cords at 3:45. He’s nervous, he says, even though he and his classmates have been practicing commencement all week.

“I think most of the kids though, now that they know they made it, can relax,” says George, Kaulana’s dad.

High school graduation is a big deal, but perhaps especially for many Nanakuli families, says principal Darin Pilialoha.

Honolulu Magazine ranks Nanakuli High and Intermediate School among Hawaii’s 257 public schools for its overall performance, based on a number of . The Waianae Coast school is in the country. Of the approximately 1,000 students in grades seven through 12, 470 are free-lunch eligible by federal standards. Another 95 are eligible for reduced-price lunch. These students who made it to graduation are the minority. More than half of their ninth-grade classmates either transferred to other schools or dropped out by senior year.

Some of those walking today weren’t sure until today that they would be able to graduate, George says.

“We struggled, but this class is really tight and there’s a lot of love here,” says Kaulana, whose parents got a geographic exception for him to stay at Nanakuli after they moved outside the district seven years ago.

He says that despite the negative perceptions of the school there are plenty of resources for those who want to do well. He describes how some of his classmates helped coach their struggling peers through remedial courses this year in order to get them up to speed to graduate. Most who weren’t doing well happily took advantage of the assistance offered them.

In many cases, those struggling academically suffered mostly from a lack of parental support, says Uilani, Kaulana’s mother. Even today, she has brought extra lei to congratulate the students whose parents don’t make a big deal out of graduation. The ones who just squeaked by may never have another reason to celebrate their educational achievements after today. The majority of parents at Nanakuli believe their work is done now, she says.

“A lot of people here see graduation as the end of any educational attainment,” Pilialoha says, adding that that mentality is one of the greatest challenges to his students’ success later in life. “I’m trying to get them to see that commencement is — yes, it’s the beginning of your life, but that education is also a lifelong pursuit. The learning never has to end.”

The school gymnasium is the formal pre-ceremony gathering place for graduates, but for an hour and a half the 114 young people mill loosely in and out of the building. Some of the boys have donned black robes; the girls, their gold ones. Several young men, many with more jewelry piercings than their female counterparts, are still looking for dress-code compliant clothes to wear under their robes.

“I’m going to need to get out the white paper collars,” observes an administrator from the Hawaii Department of Education. She dispenses bobby pins to students and helps them arrange their caps.

No photographer is in the gymnasium to take the class picture as the students line up. It’s 4:45 and at most, a half-dozen counselors and teachers have stopped in to give last-minute hugs and best wishes to their students of the last six years.

Kaulana’s dark hair, hanging loose when he first arrives, is eventually pulled back into a ponytail. He waits to put on his cap until just before walking out to the school’s stadium, where crowds are gathering in the stands.

Kaulana’s parents leave the dimly-lit gym and head over to the stadium. George shakes hands with a thin wiry guy in sagging jeans, a ribbed white tank top and a jacket. The boy’s three diamond earrings frame a face that’s all smiles.

“He’s one of the ones who didn’t know until a couple of days ago that he wouldn’t be graduating,” George explains quietly as we continue up a dirt path to the stands. Is the boy disappointed? “I figure if it meant that much to him, he would have done what it took to graduate,” George says.

Just before 5 pm, friends and relatives roam the parking lot and stands. Most of the guests are wearing shorts or jeans and slippers. Some buy Jamba Juice smoothies from a vendor inside the stadium gate. Bundles of “Congrats, Grad!” balloons in the school’s colors pepper the crowd. Inner tubes and inflatable plastic floaties signed with notes abound. Decorated signs for the graduates are held high like coats of arms.

It seems like a Saturday afternoon tailgate party until the band starts into a slow, dirge-like rendition of “Pomp and Circumstance.” The clamor of noisemakers, hoots, hollers and catcalls drowns out the strains of the familiar tune as the grads march onto the stadium field. There is no elaborate dais or backdrop for the students; only the ocean glistening behind them. They meet in the center and make their way forward to sit on the track surrounding the field — front and center below the growing crowd.

The wind picks up force, whipping through the stands and choking hapless victims who happen to be inhaling at the wrong moment.

“That’s red dirt from the track,” says Uilani as she and other parents raise their programs to shield their eyes from the dirt and sun.

Two graduates race across the field in pursuit of their caps during the formal procession. Any remnant of formality is shattered as laughter ripples through the crowd. For the remainder of the hour-long ceremony, the graduates’ hands barely leave their caps. The wind knocks over microphones and decorative plants and whistles through the sound system. But the students barely miss a beat as class president Tabitha Ayala leads the class through the national anthem, “Hawaii Ponoi,” the alma mater and the senior class song.

Their dogged determination to get through the ceremony exemplifies their attitude as a class, which comes across loud and clear as Tabitha addresses the negative stereotypes assigned to students from Nanakuli and nearby Waianae: “If you believe, then you can achieve.”

While diplomas are handed out, each student adds his or her own unique flair to the moment. A couple of graduates have “Hi Mom!” written on their caps. Some dance off stage with their diplomas, others cartwheel and one drops his pants after he is safely out of view of the principal and complex area superintendent. His boxers are red.

Despite the fun, games and even irreverence, the tone of the students’ speeches was different this year, notes an aunty as families and relatives pour onto the field to greet their grads a few minutes after 6 p.m.

“Normally the speeches have a lot of attitude and are along the lines of, ‘We’re just as good as everyone else,'” she explains. “This year they were about optimism for the future. I’ve been waiting a long time for this to happen.”

The class has a lot to be optimistic about, says senior class counselor Dyana Ontai-Machado.

“I’m very proud of this class,” she says. “They’ve worked very hard and turned into a very mature class.”

This class, dubbed “The Ambitious Class of 2010” by school administrators, has acquired nearly double the amount of scholarship money that last year’s class collected, says Pilialoha.

Although she doesn’t have exact numbers yet, Ontai-Machado says “quite a number” of her graduates are going on to four-year universities. A higher number are going to two-year universities and several are enlisting in the military.

After they have received all the lei they can fit over their heads, the graduates one by one make a trek up from the field to the administrative offices where they each choose one lei to bestow on the “Tree of Knowledge,” a Satoru Abe sculpture.

“The saying goes that it blooms every spring,” says eighth-grade social studies teacher Lika Jordan.

The graduates take the remainder of their lei with them; and, Pilialoha hopes, a lifelong hunger for knowledge that will bloom perennially.