`Make your days count'; Graduating class is first to use $90M building.

• Position: LOCAL NEWS

Byline: Richard Nangle

WORCESTER - They entered as Bulldogs and exited as Eagles, leaving the oldest trade school in the country as the first graduates to use its brand-spanking-new building - a $90-million facility on Skyline Drive and the largest public project in city history.

And it isn't even over yet. The Worcester Technical High School class of 2007 lives on through its baseball team, which plays in the Central Mass. Division 2 championship game at 3:30 this afternoon at Tivnan Field.

But for most of the 207 vocational/technical graduates, last night at the DCU Center was the end of a four-year run that saw them leave a decayed Wheaton Square campus that opened in 1910 and move to a more spacious and welcoming new building off Belmont Street. Meanwhile, the bulldog mascot was retired in favor of an eagle.

"Each one of you graduates is making history tonight," Mayor Konstantina B. Lukes said.

Valedictorian Christine Bulikowski, who studied cosmetology and will attend classes at Nichols College in the fall, congratulated graduates for making the transformation from their "young, immature and clueless" beginnings as freshmen.

"You owe it to yourself to make your days count," she said, giving a shout-out to the parents, grandparents and guardians who met them at the school bus stop every school-day afternoon.

With the new building came a new principal, Sheila M. Frias, who left the top spot at Wachusett Regional High School in Holden to take the Worcester Tech position this school year. She asked graduates not to forget the inextricable link between joy at work and excellence. Ms. Frias took over for retired principal Francis P. Canali, a Voke graduate 46 years ago who began his teaching career there in 1972.

Schools Superintendent James A. Caradonio urged graduates to rise to the challenge of an America that will have to work harder than ever simply to maintain its status as the leading world power.

Applause from the audience, a rarity during a graduation speech, interrupted School Committee member Joseph O'Brien when he admonished graduates to be voters rather than merely observers. Join a civic group, volunteer, or coach, he said.

"Please be one of the people who runs the world and not one of the people who watches it pass by," he said.

Worcester Technical High School

Class of 2007

Miguel A. Abarca, Paul N. Abegley, Julio R. Alcantara, Christopher J. Alfreds, Mariesabel Alicea, Susan A. Alicea, Peter R. Almanzar, Christopher D. Anderson, Susan M. Anderson, Daniel G. Aponte, Evelyn Arroyo, Dennis R. Arsenault, Charles A. Assencoa, Brian A. Barrows, Juan A. Belen, Robert J. Beriau Jr., Joseph A. Binette, Brittany J. Bird...