MARSHALL COUNTY, W.Va. — The hope is that they won’t be needed but, just in case, backup plans for graduation ceremonies in Marshall County were coming together with deference to social distancing guidelines necessary to limit any coronavirus spread.
In general, plans to celebrate the Class of 2020 at both John Marshall High School, with 260 graduates, and Cameron High School, with 45 graduates, called for pomp and circumstance minus crowds.
The goal was to provide graduates a moment to remember while adhering to recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“We just want to make this special for the kids,” said Dr. Shelby Haines, superintendent of schools for Marshall County.
“They look forward to this. They’ve been in school for most of their lives and have looked forward to graduation, so just in case schools aren’t back open, we want to make sure that we have something in place.
Graduation planning with the schools involved the Marshall County Health Department and the Marshall County Sheriff’s Department.
Under the alternative plans, on designated dates in May and at specified times, graduates would be permitted in their schools in caps and gowns in groups of five to cross a stage individually when their names were called.
They’ll have pictures taken with their principals without physical contact before being escorted out a different exit.
Pictures and DVDs of the ceremony, being produced through the Marshall County Communications Office and the John Marshall High School media program, were to be provided to students later.
The full ceremony with speeches and music could also possibly air publicly, though details on that had not been finalized as of Wednesday.
“We want to make sure to make this as exciting for the kids as we can so we’re looking at the best options to be able to air it so that the most people as possible can see it,” Haines said.
“It would be really cool if people could sit at home with their families and watch this.”
Spectators were not going to be allowed in with students and Haines said some people were upset about that.
“With social distancing, we just can’t. We can’t break that rule with the health department and we wouldn’t want to put our children at risk or our faculty and staff,” she said.
Similar alternative high school graduation plans were being made elsewhere in the Mountain State.
In all 55 of West Virginia’s county school systems, schools have been closed to students since the end of the day on March 13, the same day Governor Jim Justice announced the closure plan as part of broader state efforts to get ahead of COVID-19.
Schools across West Virginia were tentatively scheduled to reopen at some point after April 30.
The alternative graduation plans in Marshall County would be scrapped if that happened before May 14.
Haines said she remained optimistic.
“That’s always my goal,” she said. “Every single teacher I talk to says they miss their kids. They want to see their kids before school ends and we want to have a real graduation.”