GREENSBORO, N.C. — Page High School is working to recover from a tough year by changing the lives of others for the better. After Malik Ramirez drowned while swimming in a nearby lake, the school wants to teach students how to swim in the coming school year.
"I think we've had obviously a tough year but we had a great year all in the same. As far as the grieving process goes, we’ve all rallied together within numerous community organizations," said Principal Erik Naglee.
The High School, alumni organization, and the Greensboro Aquatic Center are teaming up to teach students how to swim. Naglee says they're hoping to get the program rolling in September and it will cost $60 per student.
He said they've already started receiving sponsors for students that might enroll the program.
"The first few weeks of school we’ll be looking for volunteers in our student body that want to learn how to swim and want to be a part of that," said Naglee.
Vice President of the Page Alumni and Friends Association Charles Wright said they were getting ready for a party to celebrate teachers when he heard the news.
"We were sitting around trying to figure out how to change things," said Wright. "We all talked about how universities here in North Carolina used to have in place that you couldn’t graduate without a swim test and we said we need to do something like that at page high school so a tragedy like this doesn’t happen again."
He said there's been an outpouring of support from the community already.
"We really just put the links live yesterday and were very excited that we have about 50 already committed and a lot of verbals that will easily take us over 100," said Wright.
