A 10-month period of planning and organizing is coming to an end
as local high school seniors and planning committees get ready for
commencement exercises for the class of 2003.
A 10-month period of planning and organizing is coming to an end as local high school seniors and planning committees get ready for commencement exercises for the class of 2003.
While groups with Anzar and San Benito high schools have been working throughout the year on making this year’s sendoff their schools’ best ever, they go about it in different ways.
SBHS graduates and their families will see a more traditional ceremony with parents of seniors and juniors making plans together. Graduating Anzar seniors do most of the decision-making for their ceremony with class advisors guiding their plans.
SBHS will hold commencement exercises June 13. Anzar’s graduation will be held June 18.
Anzar High School
At Anzar High, 48 diplomas have been ordered for Anzar’s graduating class of 2003. Because the senior class is so small, students can have more of a hand in planning the festivities. Most students in the senior class meet every Monday for 25 minutes to discuss and make decisions regarding the ceremony.
“Right now we’re focusing on music. That’s an important thing for them,” said Lynne Ellison, an Anzar teacher and senior class advisor.
All 48 students have selected a personalized 15-second selection of music to introduce them during the processional. At Monday’s meeting, they also decided to walk in alphabetical order to their seats. Seniors deliberated on walking in in order of GPA, height, advisories or randomly.
The ceremony will not have a keynote commencement speaker. Instead, the graduates will address their classmates, teachers and various family members.
“The students are going to speak themselves – those who would like to,” Ellison said. “Usually, it’s around 10 or 15 kids. They speak things to their family, their school and their community.”
There are five senior advisors, including Ellison, working on plans with the students through various committees.
As of now, Anzar has yet to print a graduation program and arrange for decorations, Ellison said. Commencement for eighth-graders in the school district ceremony is held the day before Anzar’s, and the high school usually works with the middle schools to use leftover flowers and plants, she said.
‘We focus much more on what the students have to say,” Ellison said.
San Benito High School
“Free in 2003” is the class theme seniors decided on in February. While a number of parents plan and organize SBHS’s graduation, students do have input on such decisions, said Krystal Lomanto, guidance technician and graduation coordinator.
“The committees guide what needs to be accomplished each month and the students are surveyed on their own ideas that get whittled down to the top 10. Then, all seniors vote for No. 1,” Lomanto said.
Seniors vote on the theme, masters of ceremony, grand marshals, who announces their names and which song they leave to, Lomanto said.
There are 14 different committees focused on set-up, clean-up, decorations, parking, sober graduation, security and more for the event.
“Everything comes back to the whole committee (to be voted on). It’s like a democratic process,” Lomanto said.
Parents of seniors start meeting in September. Junior parents are urged to get involved so that they can bring experience to the group when their children are seniors, Lomanto said. About 75 parents attend every meeting, she said.
Over the next two months, the parents will complete the ceremony’s program, order flowers, rehearse the activity, check speeches that will be given by various speakers, schedule set-up and clean-up and order signs and posters.
“It’s fun. It’s a lot of good minds coming together to make a solution,” Lomanto said.
