ABSS honors top graduates, many earned college credit at ACC
ABSS’s top graduates are heading to college, and 10 of the 14 earned credit through ACC’s tuition-free dual-enrollment program.
ABSS’s highest-achieving seniors turned this weekend’s commencements into a countywide scoreboard of academic success, with all 14 valedictorians and salutatorians planning to attend college in the fall. Ten of the 14 also completed college-level work through Alamance Community College’s Career and College Promise program, underscoring how often Alamance County’s top students are finishing high school with credits already in hand.
The recognition followed a school board policy change adopted in January 2020 that replaced the old Top 10 class-rank model with Latin honors based on composite GPA and honors-level coursework completed in grades 9 through 12. ABSS began using the system with the Class of 2024, and the Class of 2026 marked the third graduating class to be honored as Cum Laude, Magna Cum Laude or Summa Cum Laude.
The college pipeline is especially visible at Alamance Community College. ACC says CCP lets qualified North Carolina juniors and seniors take tuition-free college courses while still in high school, a structure that can shorten the path to certificates, diplomas and associate degrees. The college reported that 181 high school students earned college credits through CCP in its 2024-25 commencement cycle, and ACC notes that students who complete associate degrees can transfer to a four-year university as juniors.
The destinations for ABSS’s top graduates stretch well beyond Alamance County, but the strongest cluster is still in Chapel Hill and Raleigh. Five of the 14 are headed to UNC-Chapel Hill, and two are bound for NC State. The rest are spread across Duke, Davidson, the University of Vermont, UNC Greensboro, West Point, Elon and Wake Forest, giving the class a wide footprint across public, private and military pathways.
Several students also paired those admissions with major financial support and work experience. Cummings High School valedictorian Jasmine Leija plans to study nursing at UNC Greensboro and said she received $95,776 in scholarships, grants and financial aid; she said her ACC Nurse Aide experience helped shape that decision. Eastern High School salutatorian Elijah Mayle is headed to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, while Eastern valedictorian Cassidy June Watkins will attend Wake Forest University. Taken together, the list shows ABSS students advancing through heavier academic loads, early college credit and a broader range of postgraduation plans than a simple class-rank list could capture.
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