Plans underway for celebrating OHS graduation night in COVID-19 era

— from Kate Long —

In collaboration with the Orcas Island High School, we wanted to update the community on plans for the beloved annual graduation celebration for the OIHS class of 2020. We are heartbroken to not be helping our seniors through the traditional events of Prom, Senior Dinner, Baccalaureate, Celebration of Success, Graduation, Graduation Party then Grad Night but we are planning alternate events that will hopefully give this milestone the attention and celebration it deserves.

We are working toward a Plan A and Plan B for the graduation ceremony, depending on the status of the pandemic at the time of graduation, June 13. In both plans, there will be a produced video of the graduation and it will be available for all to view! We hope you will plan to watch with us from the comfort of your home.

The Celebration of Success, an event that occurs the day before Graduation (June 12), will be a combination of recorded and live streaming events coordinated by the school administration. Celebration of Success is an exciting time when both local and distant scholarships are announced. In past years our community has been incredibly generous to OIHS graduates with scholarships and honors for their achievements. We hope you will tune in for this eventful occasion also. The exact timing of the ceremonies will be announced in the coming weeks.

Other traditional graduation events are either being omitted or altered. Currently, we are working on a Senior Dinner that might include a drive-through Cap and Gown pick-up, an all-class take-out meal to be enjoyed back at home while watching a photo slide show together online. We parents are sad not able to provide “Grad Night,” the all-night event when the class spends time together after graduation playing silly games, romping through the woods at Orkila, and signing yearbooks.

We hope to send off each graduate with their own bag of Orcas-centered items, which would have been prizes during Senior Night. If you would like to help fill the bags with cards or prizes or help fund the film crew working through Orcas Center, you can donate through the Orcas Island Education Foundation’s General Fund (http://oief.org/donate/) with the memo “For Graduation.”