Thirty-four about-to-be-graduates of Bishop Byrne Catholic High School lined up two-by-two in a room next to the sanctuary of St. Paul Catholic Church in Whitehaven.

“You’ve been an extreme joy to work with,” principal Clyde Israel said as 11 boys and 23 girls adjusted their gowns, caps and tassels — boys in black and girls in red. “I love you. Have a good day. This is your day.”

As the students filed out of the room and into their future, school secretary and ex-military Hosita Hughes issued final marching orders. “No talking, and I better not hear a cell phone in there,” she said firmly. “Act like you’re somebody. God loves you, and I love you.”

Seventeen-year-old Marshun Redmond flashed a smile, and he headed out the door.

“We love you, Ms. Hughes,” said Marshun, one of five members of the Bishop Byrne Class of 2012 who were in the first Jubilee Schools kindergarten class in 1999.

This is a special graduation season for the Jubilee Schools — eight urban schools that have been reopened in recent years, thanks to an anonymous multimillion-dollar donation to the Catholic Diocese of Memphis in the late 1990s.

Members of the first Jubilee kindergarten class at St. Augustine Catholic School are graduating from various high schools and heading to various universities in the fall, including Harvard, Morehouse and Howard. Marshun is still weighing scholarship offers totaling $150,000 from four colleges.

“I feel like a parent watching her babies all grown and going off to college,” said Dr. Mary McDonald, who is stepping down as Catholic Schools superintendent next month after 14 years on the job. “I was thinking about leaving last year, but I wanted to stay and watch the first Jubilee students walk.”

She not only watched, but she also spoke at Bishop Byrne’s graduation May 5.

“There is a saying that just when you think that everything is over, that will be the beginning,” she told Marshun and his fellow graduates. “That is where you are now.”

Where Marshun is now is a direct result of where his great-grandfather, Walter J. Gibson, was 75 years ago. Gibson was one of the founding members of St. Augustine Church and School in South Memphis, now celebrating its 75th anniversary.

Walter and Lula Gibson’s children — including Marshun’s grandmother, Bobbie Gibson Redmond — attended St. Augustine. The “little school on the hill” closed in 1995, but it reopened as a Jubilee School in 1999, just as Marshun was turning 5.

“There was no way I was going to school anywhere else,” Marshun said. “My grandmother believed in a Catholic education. She did not play about that.”

Marshun’s grandmother died the year after he enrolled at St. Augustine, but he carried her memory with him as he sat in the sanctuary two weeks ago, along with his parents, Vincent and Alicia Redmond, his younger brother Bryan, a rising junior at Bishop Byrne, and his great-aunt Sara Gibson.

During the graduation ceremony, Marshun — who wants to become a teacher — read aloud from 1 Corinthians, Chapter 12:

“There are many different gifts, but it is always the same Spirit,” he read.

The spirit of the Jubilee Schools has affected all of the diocese’s Memphis high schools, where graduation rates are 99 percent. Preliminary results from University of Memphis researchers indicate that Jubilee school students feel more supported by teachers and classmates and believe going to college is more important.

The 25 members of Catholic High School’s Class of 2012, which graduates today, include four former Jubilee school students.

One of them is Tiffany Kelly, who was in the second grade at a Memphis City School when one of Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity knocked on the door of her mother’s public housing apartment.

“That day, my life dramatically changed,” said Tiffany, who started third grade at the newly reopened Holy Names Catholic School in North Memphis. “Even as a little girl, I began to see that there was something more for me than my negative surroundings.”

The teachers and sisters at Holy Names made sure she got to school on time. They made sure she had uniforms and shoes to wear. They pushed her while they nurtured her.

“They gave me something else to reach for,” Tiffany said. “It’s all about the environment you’re in.”

At Catholic High, Tiffany’s environment has extended beyond the classroom. She participated in Catholic High’s work-study program that helps students gain work experience and money for tuition by pairing them with local employers.

Tiffany has worked for the Church Health Center, the Children’s Museum of Memphis, Mid-South Food Bank, Cargill Cotton and St. Peter Villa. Now she plans to attend the University of Tennessee-Martin. She wants to become a nurse.

“I want to be a nurse. My mother wanted to be a nurse, but she wasn’t able to finish for various reasons,” said Tiffany, who will attend today’s Catholic High graduation ceremony at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception.

Tiffany’s mother, Mattie Mae Kelly, will be there, too.

“I think I might cry,” Tiffany said.