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State Senator Michael Gianaris speaks at the Long Island City High School graduation ceremony.

For two high schools that filled a large auditorium at Queens College yesterday for their graduation ceremonies, the festivities were bittersweet.

Long Island City High School and Flushing High School are among 24 city schools graduating their final cohorts before closing and reopening this summer.

Students who were enrolled in the schools this year and didn’t graduate  will continue to attend them. But their schools will have new names and many new teachers, in accordance with the rules of a federal school reform model called turnaround.

Earlier this year, the schools had packed their own auditoriums to protest the turnaround plans, which Mayor Bloomberg surprised them by announcing in January.

On Wednesday, the room reverberated not with chants but with applause — this time, to honor their newly-minted alumni. Yet the impending closures were not far from the minds of the graduation speakers, a mix of alumni, principals and top students, some who immigrated to the United States shortly before beginning high school.

“It is sad to know we are the last graduating class of Long Island City High School, but it is also an honor,” Xi Xi Hu, Long Island City High School’s valedictorian, said in her speech. (more…)