Highland District 5 makes plans for fall as high school schedules in-person graduation

Highland schools continue to adjust to the pandemic, with new plans for graduation, outside use of the facilities and an eye toward fall classes.

“We’re very pleased that things have started to open up,” said Highland District 5 Superintendent Mike Sutton.

While the state is no longer requiring districts to offer remote learning, Sutton said it would be too complicated for staffing and for students to change their system in the middle of the semester.

“We are keeping our plan the same,” Sutton said. “We will live with it the rest of this school year, but we are preparing parents that next year, remote learning will only be available for students (with high-risk medical conditions).”

Sutton said he also does not anticipate offering remote learning the same way next year, with a teacher at every grade level or teachers split between in-person and remote teaching.

Currently about 250 students out of the 2,727 children who attend Highland District 5 schools are still on remote learning. Of those, 108 are elementary students, 43 are middle school students and 109 are in the high school, Sutton said.

Another issue has been use of school facilities for non-school organizations. During the pandemic, District 5 has eliminated all requests from outside the district to use the school properties.

“We did not want people coming into our gyms and facilities unduly exposing kids or personnel to COVID,” Sutton said. “Now that the weather is improving and activities are moving outdoors, we are considering opening up for outside use outside the facility.”

That measure would only involve use of softball tennis courts, fields and other outdoor space, Sutton said. Indoor spaces such as the gymnasiums would still be off-limits for the time being.

Meanwhile, plans for an in-person graduation ceremony for Highland High School are continuing with a few changes.

“We want to allow as many people who want to watch their kids or grandkids graduate as possible,” Sutton told the school board last week.

In a normal graduation, 2,500 to 3,000 people would be in the gymnasium for graduation. The plan is to move it outdoors to the stadium, and Sutton said they calculated that they can fit 937.5 people in the stadium under the current restrictions on public events.

Setting aside the half-person, that gets complicated, Sutton said. It would mean limiting each graduate to four guests.

“The problem is, you’ve got Mom, Dad, two siblings, grandparents ... there are issues with giving out the same number per family,” he said. “We’d prefer not to be the ones to narrow down who can come.”

A possible ticket solution, graduation date set

One of the proposals might be to give each graduate tickets to hand out to family members, or to rely on the honor system and trust Highland families not to exceed the limits, Sutton said.

“We lose some control that way, but we don’t get into who gets a ticket or not,” he noted.

Graduation is planned for 2 p.m. Saturday, May 15. There are five alternative day/time slots to which the ceremony could be moved if the weather doesn’t cooperate, but Sutton said weather permitting, they are aiming for the Saturday afternoon time.

This story was originally published March 29, 2021 at 12:53 PM.