Malia turns 18 on July 4, in time to cast her first vote for president – and for her father’s successor.
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She is graduating from Sidwell Friends School, a private Quaker school in Bethesda, Maryland. You can tell. She’s just a really smart, capable person. She’s taking a year off before enrolling at Harvard in the fall of 2017.
Former President Bill Clinton delivered the speech at Sidwell Friends in 1997 when his daughter Chelsea graduated. The Obamas “are treating this as a private family moment”, a White House official tells PEOPLE.
Today is also Sasha’s 15th birthday. As the president wraps up his past year in office, he said the prospect of Malia leaving is the most stressful.
The Obama girls were the youngest kids to grow up at the White House since President John F. Kennedy’s children, Caroline and John Jr., more than a half century ago. Obama made a point in his presidency of dining with his family at night in the White House residence, returning to work in the Oval Office afterwards if necessary.
“The idea of her having to transfer schools, move to a new city, halfway through high school would not make me popular”, Obama said, joking that “it is a little depressing” that he will remain in city after his term is up and likening himself to the “old guy at the disco”.
While he wasn’t able to teach her to drive – that task was taken up by the Secret Service – Obama did attend yearly parent-teacher conferences at Sidwell Friends and occasionally attended a basketball game or dance recital.
Once in the White House, her parents shielded her from the spotlight.
Family Research Council President Tony Perkins accused Obama of ignoring pressing national issues to focus on transgender access to bathrooms; Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., vowed that Obama won’t get his Supreme Court nominee in the “eleventh hour” of his presidency. But the president won’t be moving far from his current address, as the first family plans to remain in D.C. until his youngest daughter Sasha finishes out her high school career.
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But don’t expect to see Malia lingering around for too long.
