The Rose Hill graduates of 2021 have gone through a difficult school year dealing with COVID-19 that caused many problems with social events such as dances or sports games. 

But the final event of their school year will look as close to normal as anything else this year, as graduation will be held in the main gymnasium like in previous years.

The plans for graduation have been in discussion since the beginning of the school year, according to Shannon Haydock, the principal of Rose Hill High School. 

“This is a decision that has been in the works for several months,” Haydock said. “Starting in the first semester and basically the first meeting of the year we had graduation on our agenda to talk about.”

There are different possibilities with the visual aspects of graduation. 

“We’ve talked about the drive up scenario, we talked about having it outdoors at the stadium, so yes we’ve talked about having students come in one at a time across the stage like a lot of schools and districts did last year,” said Haydock. 

Even with all the benefits graduation has to offer there are some arrangements that those at graduation will have such as wearing masks, social distancing, and ticket limits for family’s only.

“We have certain protocols and things that are in place that we have to work around,” Haydock said. “We have the county health department giving us numbers on how many numbers we can have indoors, how we’re going to socially distance families and students alike, and really just the number we can have.” 

The high school graduation will be at 2:30 on Sunday, May 16 in the main gymnasium. It will also be streamed on Rocket Productions’ YouTube channel.