Chaffee County has two public school districts, Salida and Buena Vista. Each is taking divergent paths to address the all-important 2020 high school graduation ceremonies, as the coronavirus pandemic known as COVID-19 has spread around the world and to the local level. Buena Vista plans to move ahead with a May 23 graduation date, Salida has postponed its graduation ceremony to July 18.
Construction of the new Buena Vista Middle and High School continues, April 2, 2020. Photo by Jan Wondra.
Last week, Colorado Governor Jared Polis extended the state stay-at-home orders through April 26. What will happen after that is not yet known.
Colorado has not yet reached the peak of COVID-19 cases, and estimates of when it will occur are all over the board. Even past that peak, how the state will proceed to open its economy, as well as return to normal daily activities remains unknown as well.
“We did announce yesterday that graduation ceremonies are postponed,” wrote Salida School District Superintendent David Blackburn this week. “The date chosen for the traditional high school [ceremony] is July 18. We haven’t announced any official cancellation of the other key spring events, but are planning on many of them being cancelled.”
“This year we are good for graduation, BV High School as well as Chaffee County High School,” said Buena Vista School District Superintendent Lisa Yates during the April 6 Buena Vista School Board meeting. “We will hold to a May 23 graduation date.”
Salida School District Football Field, Courtesy photo.
Asked where this might be held or what that might be like, Yates said that that was still to be determined.
“If we are still in this stay-at-home status, in our district we’ve got wide open spaces and places — we can come up with a way to hold graduation. We can be distanced enough for a ceremony, or some sort of virtual event. If we have to do it with cars, we’ve got parking lots on our property — we could look at using the drive-in. What we want students to know is, we will find a way to say ‘we’re going to celebrate this day.’”
Still to be determined is how either school district will handle senior awards nights, or whether either will find another way to honor achieving students. At this point, neither school district has offered updated information on whether either district will hold a prom, or a replacement for the traditional prom, even after stay-at-home orders are lifted at some point in the future.
In the case of Buena Vista, it was already working around the fact that it won’t have a gym available, due to the demolition related to the new school construction.
“The likelihood of either of those traditions being replicated [right now] is not high, said Yates. “This summer, if things open back up, we could plan something.”
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