The graduation ceremony for the class of 2025 was held on Monday, June 9, at the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C.. It was a monumental day full of smiles, tears and new beginnings as seniors closed out this chapter of their lives, walking across the stage and receiving their diploma with new doors opening for them and their loved ones cheering with pride. Beyond the fond memories that this commencement always brings are several months of hard work and planning by school administration that often goes unrecognized.
The graduation planning process begins at the start of the school year in September as administration receives information from MCPS about the graduation date and location. “We start getting information from MCPS as to what the contracted feeds are for certain locations, or what the approved locations are that we can use. And then we have a lottery around October and November where we get a date for graduation, and once we get the date for that, everything just starts falling into place,” Business Administrator Arlin De La Rosa said.
After the date and location are confirmed, graduation coordinator Christy Rice works to organize every single detail of the event with the rest of the graduation committee, which is comprised of teachers Rice, Keith Schwarz, Victoria McCarthy, Anne-Marie Steppling, Barbara Silcox and Acting Principal Dr. Joseph Bostic. “Once we know our graduation date, that’s when we really hit the ground running with booking buses, booking florists and all of the vendors that we need for our venue, getting the cap and gown orders, figuring out how many tickets graduates will need, and figuring out the handicapped seating needs for our graduates’ guests,” Rice said.
In addition to the graduation committee, Patriot Ambassadors play a huge role in the success of the ceremony. “The Patriot Ambassadors play such a significant role in rehearsal and graduation itself. They do a tremendous amount of work in terms of the behind the scenes, getting the graduates lined up, helping at rehearsal and just being those leaders that get everything in order and help. It’s almost 500 graduates, so Patriot Ambassadors play a significant role in getting everybody organized and making sure that we’re in the right order,” Rice said.
In total, senior graduation usually costs around $10,000 for the venue, caps and gowns, vendors and streaming of the ceremony online. “We always budget that based off of what MCPS gives us in their stipend for graduation, and then seniors’ dues go towards graduation costs as well,” De La Rosa said.
This year’s program included speeches by senior class President Noah Friedman, senior class Vice President Naima Cho-Khaliq, senior class Secretary Justin Kim, Hall of Fame award recipient Christian Smithson, Bostic, Board of Education President Julie Yang, and 2018 Olympic gold medalist Haley Skarupa. “I was really impressed with the lineup of speakers, especially the gold medalist. I think it’s really cool and inspiring that someone like her graduated from the same school as me and was in my shoes just a few years ago,” graduating senior Ojas Tare said.
Changes are already underway for the graduation for the class of 2026. This year, there were challenges with securing the venue due to newly added costs for professionally recording and streaming the ceremony online, which may change the location of next year’s graduation. “The only curveball we got hit with this year was the audio and visual aspects in the DAR and that they were going to charge us way more than what we were expecting because normally, that’s just in the package that we pay for. But then [MCPS] said that they got in contact with DAR and they said that next year, they will start charging more for how we stream it online, so we might look into using other locations because DAR was the best option in terms of cost,” De La Rosa said.
Also, rather than having the senior class officers speak at graduation like they traditionally do, the graduation committee is considering having a new senior student speaker position, where any student in the graduating class can audition to give a speech and the speaker would be chosen based on their speech content rather than their pre-established position as an officer. “We’re asking, ‘What do we value? Do we value tradition, where people are elected and get this spot, or do we value the message that people are delivering?’ So that’s one of the things that we want to start having a conversation about very early next year, and also having students being a part of the graduation committee too. So we want to make sure that there’s an early conversation, and that whatever direction we go in is best for the graduates,” Rice said.
