Before her kindergarten students marched off the Poughkeepsie Middle School stage to the tune of McFadden & Whitehead’s “Ain’t No Stopping Us Now,” Principal Nadine Elting-Dargan asked a favor of the assembled parents and families in attendance.
“You are looking at the Poughkeepsie High School class of 2037. I need you to keep that date in mind. They need to hear 2037 over, and over, and over again,” she said. “That is when – that is not if – that is when they begin their college journey. Don’t make it an option. It’s not an option. We graduate in 2037, we go to college in 2037. I encourage you to make that something that sticks in their head.”Elting-Dargan and the Early Learning Center staff said goodbye to their young students in four ceremonies held this week. The kindergarteners celebrated moving up to the first grade in three sessions Tuesday and Wednesday, and the pre-kindergarten classes commemorated completing a successful first year in a ceremony Friday morning.For all, it marked a farewell to the school, for now. Under the district’s Elementary Reconfiguration plan, the Smith Early Learning Center next year will become the Smith Elementary School, serving grades 3-5. The pre-K and kindergarten classes will be held at Krieger and Sojourner Truth – currently Morse before it is renamed July 1 – elementary schools. 

All the ceremonies were music-filled parties. Elting-Dargan began each by giving families a designated time to come up to the stage and take photos, freeing the students up to perform and the families to enjoy the show.
The kindergarten classes sang songs with education-themed lyrics - "First Grade Here We Come" to the tune of Backstreet Boys' "Everybody;" "Kinder Road" to the tune of "Old Town Road;" and a kindergarten edition of "Shake It Off." Then each student's name was called and they had a brief moment to stand and acknowledge loved ones in the audience.
The pre-K ceremony then honored roughly 90 students, including 36 in the two dual-language chapters. The students performed five songs, which Elting-Dargan pointed out to the many family and friends in the audience, would "showcase some of the many things we have learned this year. It’s been an incredible year of learning and growth in all of the pre-K classes in ELC. We have learned letter names and sounds, position words, opposites, how to count in order to 20 and many more skills we are sure you are seeing at home."The students performed the "Hello Song," the "Alphabet Song" in English and Spanish, "Open, Shut Them," "The Number Rock" and "Pre-K Rocks."
“Thank you for entrusting your child’s first year of school with us,” Elting-Dargan told the families.
After each ceremony, the students moved into the lobby where they received their certificate, a snack and gifts, and connected with their family members to be dismissed for the day.