BRETTON WOODS — The U.S. Department of Education’s outreach secretary will deliver the keynote address Sunday afternoon at North Country Charter Academy’s Class of 2012 commencement.

John White will be the featured speaker at the 4 p.m. event at Omni Mount Washington Resort — the Mount Washington Hotel — in Bretton Woods.

A native of Calvert County, Md., White was raised in an area known for tobacco fields and family farms in the late-1970s and early ’80s, a time when the rural county had only two high schools. That background helped him being chosen to serve on the White House Rural Council, created by President Obama in 2011.

White represents the U.S. education secretary on the council, which has a goal of strengthening rural communities and promoting their economic growth. His duties include overseeing day-to-day communication and outreach to rural schools, colleges and the media.

He’s also the education secretary’s designee to the Interagency Coordinating Council for the Appalachian Regional Development Initiative. White joined the U.S. Department of Education in 2009.

Sunday will mark the eighth graduation for NCCA, which strives to provide a “learning environment for students who would benefit from a nontraditional high school setting,” according to the school’s mission statement.

Graduates Dylan Foskett, Roger Hall, Cheyenne Landry, Alexa Planz and Kayla Saucier are also scheduled to address the gathering.

Forty-three students are expected to receive diplomas Sunday. The graduates would otherwise have been members of nine administrative units in New Hampshire and two Vermont supervisory unions over a wide geographic range of New Hampshire’s North County and Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom. The communities include Berlin, Colebrook, Littleton, Gorham and Haverhill in New Hampshire, and Bloomfield and Northumberland in Vermont.

North Country Charter Academy was founded in 2004, and is located in the buildings that were the former site of Littleton Regional Hospital. It also has a site in Lancaster.

The grade 7-12 academy earned national recognition last year for achieving success in one of its stated goals — lowering school dropout rates.