School districts start to firm up graduation plans for this summer
Some Garland County school districts are starting to firm up graduation plans now that the state has given direction about when ceremonies can be held.
There will be no traditional high school graduation ceremonies in the state before July 1, officials announced at the governor’s daily news briefing in Little Rock on Saturday.
Education Secretary Johnny Key acknowledged that the end-of-year celebration is a highly anticipated event for students, educators and their families, but the risk is still too great to plan large gatherings, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported Sunday.
“In many communities, high school graduation is one of the most attended, largest events in the community in the whole year,” Key said. “When you have friends, family members coming from across the state, and in many cases coming from out of state, for a traditional graduation ceremony, we simply cannot mitigate sufficiently the risk of spread in a situation like that.”
Adriane Barnes, communications and public relations coordinator for the Hot Springs School District, said it will host a traditional graduation at the Hot Springs Convention Center at 7:30 p.m. July 30, unless safety precautions prevent the district from holding it.
“We will host a virtual HSSD Graduation
Ceremony” on May 14 at 7:30 p.m. on the Hot Springs World Class High School Facebook page, she said.
Cutter Morning Star School District Superintendent Nancy Anderson said the district is looking at having only a traditional graduation at the end of July or most likely the first of August.
“We were doing a Zoom meeting with our seniors, and they very much want to do the traditional. They didn’t want to have the online, ” she said.
Jessieville School District Superintendent Melissa Speers said the district has decided to only do a traditional graduation on July 25. The seniors did not want to do a virtual graduation.
For seniors who will be going off to basic training before the traditional graduation, the district will hold a small gathering at the school’s performance arts center. They will still follow the guidelines from the health department about no more than 10 people, holding it on separate days, she said.
Corey Alderdice, the director of Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences, and the Arts, said the school had informed parents they would have a traditional graduation on Saturday, Aug. 1, that is subject for approval by the University of Arkansas System Board of Trustees.
“We hope that they’ll waive that request at their upcoming meeting on May 4,” he said.
Alderdice said the school would be hosting an online graduation through Facebook Live in May that is likely to be a hybrid of their usual honors day ceremony as well as a recognition of the senior class.