Dear Seniors and Senior Families,
I am thrilled to report that we have a new graduation date and venue. Graduation for the Class of 2021 is now scheduled for the Puyallup Fairgrounds on Tuesday, June 15, 2021. Pictured above is a scene from another school's graduation at the fairgrounds just to give you a visual.
When the Showare Center cancelled their facility as a graduation venue, we wanted to find a local outdoor site that holds a lot of people to give us the best shot of having a traditional graduation ceremony with the most people possible attending under state COVID protocols.
For an event like graduation, Phase 3 allows seating for "up to 25% of an outdoor venue's regular capacity or up to 9,000, whichever is less." As a result of this mandate and based on the fairgrounds seating capacity, each student will be provided a set amount of tickets for guests to coincide with seating restrictions. The number of tickets for each graduating senior is still being finalized, but we estimate it will be around 4 tickets per senior. The state will be revisiting phasing seating capacities on April 15th. More details to come as we continue to monitor health guidelines in conjunction with the health department and the fairgrounds.
If you haven't purchased graduation gowns yet from Jostens, if you do so this week by Wednesday March 17th you will be able to pick it up at our drive up event next Monday. The Final deadline to order gowns is May 1 (ordering info below).
Seniors, if you missed the Senior Meeting yesterday, see info below on how to access the video replay. I highly recommend you watch it as it contains important information regarding graduation requirements.
Lastly, we are working on our end of the year calendar for seniors evaluating what we can and can't do under COVID protocols. We will be posting our senior event calendar for May and June in mid-April in order to give us as much time as possible to evaluate state and local COVID policies.
The governor's announcement last week has given us reason to be hopeful that a traditional ceremony in some degree will be possible, assuming trends continue to go the right direction and we get to, and stay, in Phase 3!
Sincerely,
Brandon Bakke
Principal
