The graduating seniors from North Attleboro High School pose for a class photo in the schoolyard.

The Providence Journal / Bill Murphy Bill Murphy

NORTH ATTLEBORO — Ask anyone from this year’s graduating class from North Attleboro High School, from the jocks to the skaters to the high achievers, and they’ll agree their class is all about making everyone feel welcome.

“What defines this year’s class is that they are very tolerant and accepting of each other,” said principal Robert Gay. “They’re a very inclusive group.”

Class valedictorian Brittany Pereira said it took until this year for the class to come together.

“We learned acceptance and tolerance. We became a bigger group,” she said. “We all work really well together and are supportive of each other.”

Pereira, who will attend Brown University in the fall, pointed out how the class revived the Homecoming Dance in October.

“There hadn’t been a dance for a few years because no one really went,” she explained. “But we basically decided we wanted a dance and we got everyone in the school excited about it.”

Today, the 284 members of the Class of 2007 will receive their diplomas on the high school football field.

And while this year seniors said they have been on their best behavior, many remembered the pranks they pulled through the years.

As sophomores, some members of the class released about 200 crickets into the space above the high school ceiling. “They were falling out of the vents, making noise. You heard them for three months after,” Chris Carletti said.

Then there was that day toward the end of their junior year when three-fourths of the class skipped school to go to a Tom Petty concert.

But that same year, classmate and lacrosse player Daniel Cronin died in an accident, reminding students that life wasn’t all fun and games.

“I think it came as a shock because not everyone had been exposed to that sort of thing before,” Pereira said.

This year, the class is donating a plaque that will be placed in the school lobby in memory of Cronin, and the school is setting up a scholarship in his name.

As he stood with his fellow seniors for the last official group photo of the Class of 2007 Tuesday afternoon, Chris Cabral tried to think of his one great high school memory.

Cabral, who is heading to the University of Massachusetts in Dartmouth to study civil engineering, wracked his brain, and came up empty.

So, he summed up his memories of high school this way: “I couldn’t have pictured a more perfect high school.”

pmarcelo@projo.com