Superintendent: Seniors will have graduation in '20

St. Mary Parish high school graduations likely will be rescheduled from their mid-May dates and may be moved outside, but regardless, they will be held, St. Mary Parish Schools Superintendent Teresa Bagwell said following Thursday’s monthly board meeting in Centerville.
Bagwell said the move to an outside location with people at a distance from one another may be made depending on the restrictions at the time it is OK to have a graduation.
“What I can promise you is that there will be a ceremony,” she said. “I can’t tell you exactly when. It may be in June. It may be in July, but as soon as we can safely hold a graduation ceremony, our seniors are going to get that opportunity.”
Currently, she said, school officials are focused on getting the seniors prepared for that step to qualify for graduation.
“We want to give all of our seniors the opportunity to recoup any credits that they may need by chance for graduation,” Bagwell said.
As for how things play out for the rest of the school system’s students, things aren’t clear, yet.
The Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education as well as the Louisiana Association of School Superintendents have asked Gov. John Bel Edwards to keep schools closed through the remainder of the year due to COVID-19.
Bagwell said it is “very likely” the school system will hold a summer session for certain students if students don’t return to school this year.
“There will be no mandatory option from what I know of as of right now,” she said. “We have already begun planning for some intensive two to three-week sessions for our students if it does happen they don’t come back until August.”
In the meantime, Bagwell stressed using the packets that were distributed to students. A second packet has been handed out, and parents should contact the school if they need one.
“I think what parents need to know is it’s really important for kids to continue learning every single day and to participate using those packets,” Bagwell said. “If it becomes a need later on to finalize grades, that’s our only source of information about how a student has been learning over the last nine weeks, so those may become very, very important.”
Also, St. Mary Parish is working to have meals delivered to students who signed up for the service. She said the school system concluded the verification process early last week.
“It’s my understanding that there may be one parish that has actually received the meals, so that gives me hope that ours are in queue and that we will be receiving them very soon,” Bagwell said. “I do know the turnaround time for them was a couple of weeks.”