Thursday, June 4, 1998 | 10:22 a.m.
When Johnny Edwards graduated from high school this week, he told his fellow classmates, who are also fellow prison inmates, that he used to be ashamed to tell people he couldn't read.
It was while confined, he said in a graduation speech to his classmates, that he finally learned how to read by taking Clark County School District prison classes.
With pomp and circumstance, the class of 1998 is receiving its diplomas this week, but these graduates aren't your typical high school students: They're all state prisoners. More than 300 southern Nevada inmates are graduating.
Edwards was handed a diploma from a district administrator at a graduation ceremony inside the Southern Desert Correctional Center near Indian Springs.
Inmates from Southern Desert, including the 46-year-old Edwards, who has been incarcerated there since a 1988 conviction, graduated on Tuesday, as well as inmates from the Southern Nevada Correctional Center in Jean on Wednesday.
Female inmates imprisoned at the Southern Nevada Women's Correctional Facility in North Las Vegas are scheduled to graduate today, said Howard Skolnik, spokesman for the Nevada Division of Prisons.
"They wear caps and gowns, the whole nine yards," Skolnik said. "We have a couple of the area superintendents who hand them their diplomas. Other than the fact that it's in a prison, it's very similar to the ceremonies at the Thomas & Mack Center (at UNLV)."
This year 110 graduates are receiving diplomas from the Clark County School District, while 210 are receiving equivalency diplomas from the state after passing a General Education Development proficiency exam, Skolnik said.
The largest class is in Southern Desert, with 149 graduates.
Edwards told the crowd that he enrolled in school after being imprisoned because after his arrest, he signed a document given to him by his attorney that Edwards was unable to read.
"He wouldn't tell anybody," Skolnik said. "He feels he went to prison because he was too embarrassed to tell anybody he couldn't read. These are the inmates who have identified the fact that, without an education, they just can't make it."
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