As you know a couple of weeks ago, we released plans for a reverse parade and a graduation ceremony. A few hours after our plans were released, the Ohio Department of Education sent updated rules for holding any form of face-to-face gatherings. They strongly discouraged any such events taking place. Since then we have been working diligently as a committee to make certain that our plans for both events could be approved under the new guidelines.
We are extremely excited to tell you that our graduation ceremony plan has been approved by the County Health Department and other required entities, we will be proceeding with the ceremony pretty much as planned - the seniors will be allowed to walk the stage and to be presented their diplomas by two of their family members in attendance. We are so happy that we were able to get this approved, as the receiving of your diploma is a very special and well deserved moment!! In order to still be permitted to hold the graduation ceremony we will have very strict parameters put in place for all in attendance. We will be making certain that all social distancing guidelines are being met during the ceremony and that only those people that have been guaranteeing together will be permitted to have contact of closer than 6 feet with one another. We will be sending out more specific guidelines to each of you next week regarding the logistics of the ceremony. Again, we understand that this might not be the graduation ceremony that each of you have dreamed of, however, considering the current situation and restrictions that have been placed on all of us, we are extremely grateful that we have been able to get our plan approved and that we will be able to hold a ceremony on school grounds.
Unfortunately, due to the same restrictions that have been released since our initial plans for the Reverse Parade were rolled out, we have no choice but to cancel it. This was not an easy decision for the committee to make, as we truly wanted to be able to celebrate each one of you. However, there would be no way for us to guarantee that social distancing would occur during the event. Moreover, we do not want to do anything that could jeopardize us being able to hold our graduation ceremony as planned. We know that if the parade were held, and the restrictions were violated, that it would be very likely to have a detrimental impact on our graduation plans. That is not something that we are willing to risk, as it is our top priority to be able to hold as close to an in-person graduation on school grounds as possible. If you have any questions or concerns, please email: Julie Miller at miller.julie@wynfordroyals.org.