Summer graduation ceremony July 18
By Joey Pitchford
Published in News on June 11, 2017 1:45 AM
Summer graduates from Wayne County high schools will be able to celebrate earlier than usual this year, as Wayne County Public Schools is set to hold its first ever All-County summer graduation ceremony July 18.
The ceremony is for students who complete the requirements for a high school diploma by the end of June. Many such students use a system called credit recovery, which allows students who narrowly failed classes to re-test in the specific areas they were lacking in.
By using a computer program to determine which units the students were weak in, the district can re-teach those specific units. Students who then pass the tests are given a passing grade, in lieu of a letter grade, which allows them to graduate.
Tamara Ishee, WCPS assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction, said the summer graduation is intended to motivate students to try again.
"We really want to encourage these guys to come back and do the work they need to do and graduate," she said. "We figured that we have four or five students from each school doing small ceremonies, so lets get it all together and make it a bigger deal."
By creating a larger ceremony, Ishee said the district hopes to show summer graduates that their efforts matter. Coming back and fixing mistakes made during the school year is difficult, she said, and graduates who do so should be recognized with a ceremony similar to those who graduated during the regular year.
"Of course we'd like everyone to hit the mark during the year, but we don't want a kid to give up," she said. "It takes a lot to come back and do that work."
Ishee said she expects roughly 25 to 40 students to take part in the ceremony. Coming to the graduation is not a requirement to receive a diploma, and a concrete number of attendees will not be available until closer to the event.
The graduation is tentatively set to take place in the Wayne Community College auditorium.
Ishee said that confirmation on that space should come within the next week or so, but she is confident it will go as planned.