District balks at graduation price tag

BRIDGEPORT — Graduation Day for the Class of 2018 in Bridgeport comes at a price the school board may be unwilling to pay.

The bill to host five consecutive graduation ceremonies for the district’s seven high schools on a single day in June at the Arena at Harbor Yard is $37,000, according to a contract proposal distributed to the board by Schools Superintendent Aresta Johnson.

That’s apparently $1,000 more than the district was charged in 2017.

Between the price tag and complaints that graduating at the large 10,000seat arena can be chaotic and impersonal, has school officials looking for alternatives.

“Thirty-seven thousand dollars is an astronomical number,” said Chris Taylor, a freshman school board member. “I personally will not support the arena at that price. You will not get my vote.”

Given the district’s is poised to face its third severe budget deficit in as many years if it doesn’t get a huge infusion of cash from a state which is also broke, Schools Superintendent Aresta Johnson had to agree.

“I too said, ‘Oh my God this is a really expensive rate,’ ” Johnson said.

Graduations moved to the arena a few years back when Bassick’s graduating class became too big for its traditional venue, the Klein Memorial Auditorium on Fairfield Avenue and construction at Central High made the adjacent John F. Kennedy field inaccessible.

There are also more high schools than in the past. Besides Bassick, Central and Harding, there is also the Bridgeport Military Academy and three sciencethemed high schools at the Fairchild Wheeler Interdistrict campus.

Between them they are expected to graduate close to 1,000 students.

Last year, the city celebrated the graduations on a single day, June 20, with ceremonies one after the other, from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. leaving barely enough time for one set of parents to drive in as another drove out.

Susan Anschau, a Bassick parent called the stacked graduations absurd.

“Seniors need to have their moment with their families and their pictures,” Anschau told the board at a recent meeting. “How do you expect to get a seat all the way up in the Bridgeport arena and your child is all the way down over here. We have to be there four or five hours early to get a decent seat. That is not right. Things need to change.”

Johnson said by 2019 things will change. The JFK field will be available for both Central and Bassick ceremonies, Harding will have a brand new field of its own, and talks are said to be under way to hold the BMA graduation at the University of Bridgeport, and Fairchild at Sacred Heart University.

It’s this spring that is the problem. First, because of multiple snow days, graduation day has yet to be set. Penciled in for Monday, June 18, the district is now looking at June 21 or 22 depending on how the rest of March turns out.

Taylor suggested the district ask the arena for a lower rate. He said nonprofits he has been associated with have been offered rental rates at the arena that are a fraction of what the board was quoted.

“The day of taking advantage of this board is over,” Taylor said. “This is where you trim the fat.”

Johnson said that still wouldn’t satisfy the desire for more intimate settings.

Board member Hernan Illingworth asked Johnson to explore moving some, if not all, of the graduations to college campuses this spring.

Johnson said her principals are already looking into it and that the issue will most likely be settled by the board’s March 26 meeting.