Little Wolf High School commencement on July 25
By Greg Seubert
Little Wolf Junior/Senior High School seniors now have a graduation date.
The Manawa School Board selected Saturday, July 25, for a graduation ceremony to be held at 11 a.m. at the Manawa Athletic Complex.
The board approved the date on a 5-0 vote May 11.
“We have the July date as the preferred date being recommended by the survey of seniors,” District Administrator Melanie Oppor said. “Every family got one vote. We asked people to work together – students and parents – and it was 70% to 30% for the July date.”
Oppor said one option is for graduates to leave their vehicle to receive their diploma.
“Right now, it’s slated as semi-virtual,” she said. “The hope there is we would be in at least Phase 1 or 2 (of the Badger Bounce Back plan), which would allow group sizes either of 10 or less or 50 or less, depending on which phase we are in. We would schedule the timing of people coming to get their diploma so they would be spaced out. If we limit it to 10, we would have to space them out further. If they pull up in a car, they would get out, get their diploma, get back in the car and drive away. Some parts would be prerecorded so we’d get high-quality audio and you could really hear the students and the presenters. The senior class president, the names of the students being read, that could be done live or prerecorded. We could livestream that.
“Or, they could be spaced out 6 feet on the track,” she said. “Once they receive their diploma, both people would be encouraged to move on, get in their cars and leave. We’d have to have some help monitoring that. Everyone said be sure you talk with your law enforcement and that they’ll support it and work with you on the timing. We’d have to probably do some kind of phasing and we’d have to work it out with law enforcement. A certain number of cars pull up, the graduate gets out, receives the diploma, gets back in the car and that car leaves. There’s never a large number in the same place at the same time.”
Change of plans
The Manawa School District and others across Wisconsin are working on graduation plans.
“Some districts are separating them in 10- to 15-minute increments or something like that,” Oppor said. “I think we could expedite it a little bit easier than that. A lot of people are talking about their strategies and how they’re going to do it.”
Board member Stan Forbes asked about the Shiocton School District’s plan of setting aside one day in May, June, July and August and eventually selecting a date.
“If things didn’t happen with the pandemic, they would make other arrangements,” he said. “I’m just throwing that out there. I don’t know how they can do that.”
“It makes things relatively uncertain in terms of when something’s actually going to happen,” Oppor said.
The Manawa district originally scheduled its graduation in May, but the COVID-19 pandemic and Wisconsin’s Safer at Home order changed that plan.
“I believe the date on the diplomas is still May,” Oppor said. “There are a few of our students that are going off to the military and they have asked to make arrangements to pick up diplomas as long as they fulfill all of their requirements. That certainly makes sense for those that won’t be with us.”
“They’re graduating in May,” board member Joanne Johnson said. “The only difference is that the ceremony is going to be pushed to a later date. I certainly hope that we would not order new diplomas and have the added expense. I would think we would just continue with the diplomas that we have that say May.”
Two surveys
The district conducted two graduation surveys, according to Oppor.
“The first survey offered May as a virtual (ceremony) and the July date had two options: outdoors or at the elementary school gym,” she said. “The outdoor one was the most popular. We had a follow-up survey and that one offered the more popular outdoor July version or a Sept. 5 version. They wanted to be back in the gym. That seemed very important, to be back in their own high school. They wanted a traditional graduation in the gym with all their guests. That would be at the Phase 3 no person limit.”
The junior/senior high school gym is currently filled with furnishings because of the ongoing construction project.
“We’d have to have time for the remodeling to be complete and all the furnishings to be moved out of the gym,” Oppor said. “The soonest that Hoffman felt we could pull that off is Sept. 5, right before school begins. We tried for an August date and they said there’s no way we would be finished and moved out of the gym by then.”
Some students also indicated in one of the surveys that they are not interested in a Sept. 5 ceremony.
“Some had stated that they’d already be gone and they didn’t know if they would be able to get back,” Oppor said. “I never know if it’s the student or the parent writing, but some students are ready to move on to the next phase of their lives. By September, they’re already doing what they’re going to be doing for the future. They didn’t want to come back from college to have a high school graduation.”