A year after the government response shutdown schools statewide, things are slowly returning to normal as adults get vaccinated against COVID-19, though vaccine hesitancy has slowed our nationwide crawl toward herd immunity.

Arizona schools were closed by Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey and Superintendent of Public Instruction Kathy Hoffman on March 16, 2020, initially declared temporary, but made permanent March 30, for the rest of the school year. That declaration and House Bill 2910 effectively ended the 2019-20 school year two months ahead of schedule, but made sure students and teachers would not be penalized for leaders’ emergency decisions.

Students at all grades were cut loose two months early with a slapdash online teaching structure imple­mented at varying success levels — mainly varying between “mediocre” and “useless” depending on how tech savvy teachers and districts were.

Unfortunately the early closure also meant graduating seniors were denied traditional rites of passage.

Prom, senior plays and concerts and on-campus graduation festivities were denied outright by closures while graduation itself in front of these students’ communities — bedecked in caps and gowns, surrounded by roses, weeping parents and swelling music — was either moved online or adapted to the environment with social distancing outdoors [Mask rules weren’t implemented in most areas until late June].

“If students have to wear masks to attend prom or HAZMAT suits to slow dance, we should provide them. If seniors have to sit 6-feet apart at gradua­tion, bust out the tape measures and start marking the field.”

Matriculation from one grade to another isn’t typi­cally that big a deal, ceremonially speaking, and the end of the school year is just the invitation to summer. But for sixth-graders and/or eighth-graders leaving their campuses and high school seniors, the end of the year is a much bigger deal.

The younger kids are leaving perhaps the only school they’ve ever known while high school seniors are leaving the public education system altogether. While many seniors go on to trade schools, community colleges or four-year universities, for many, graduation from senior year marks the effective end to their educa­tional endeavor.

In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic denied students a celebration of that end, both permanent and until college.

In 2020, Verde Valley school districts held virtual graduation ceremonies, which involves bringing in students one by one, videotaping or livestreaming the graduation ceremony and receiving their diploma, and splicing clips together into a full video.

This year, with life somewhat returning to normal, students more than the rest of us adults, deserve some semblance of a normal graduation.

It’s not students’ fault that economic globaliza­tion made our interconnected world where a virus from one city could spread worldwide in a matter of months, nor is it their fault that failures of govern­ment leaders at the local, state, national and inter­national levels could coalesce to the point were lockdowns and staying 6 feet away from others are the best mitigation policies rather than contact tracing, extensive testing and targeted quarantines of infected persons, nor is it their fault that competing factions of political foes would actively spread false information claiming the very real virus was fake.

As parents, our job is to create a world better than our own so our children do not suffer for our sins.

As 2021 graduation nears, we should all do our best to give the Class of 2021 as normal a gradua­tion and send-off as possible.

If students have to wear masks to attend prom or HAZMAT suits to slow dance, we should provide them. If seniors have to sit 6-feet apart at gradua­tion, bust out the tape measures and start marking the field.

We will print our annual graduation pages and photos of all the graduating students. Any individ­uals, organizations or businesses who would like to honor graduates with an ad can contact us at (928) 282-7795 ext. 114.

If any members of the community, nonprofit organizations or businesses would like to honor our students with policy or program, event or donation, photo of a scholarship award ceremony, email us a write-up and photo to editor@larsonnewspapers. com.

These are still odd and uncertain times for us all, but we can work together to do our best to honor the next generation of adults as they move from high school and into the bigger world.

Christopher Fox Graham

Managing Editor