Ironwood looks to return of traditional year-end events

By RICHARD JENKINS

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Ironwood — To say that the end of the school year last year was unusual would be an understatement. The coronavirus pandemic meant students finished the school year remotely and staff at the Ironwood Area Schools was left coordinating how to get the contents of lockers back to their owners rather than organize the traditional end-of-year events — many of which were canceled or drastically changed due to COVID.

The district hopes this year features a return to more recognizable events, although officials said they may continue some of last year’s new traditions as well, and are releasing details as the events approach.

K-12 Principal Melissa Nigh said the hope is that it will provide the graduating students with something familiar to them, having watched past classes go through the rituals associated with the end of their high school careers.

“We need to, as much as we can, give them some normalcy — whatever that looks like,” Nigh recently told the Daily Globe.

Although the plan remains fluid, Nigh said the current idea is to have the district’s graduation ceremony — scheduled for 2 p.m. on May 30, the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend — as an in-person event inside the Luther L. Wright K-12 School.

The hope is to have the ceremony be fairly close to what the district normally does — although Nigh said some elements, like the participation of the representatives of the younger grades, may be cut as precautions against COVID-19. She also said pandemic restrictions may force the district to limit the number of tickets each graduate receives.

With attendance potentially limited, Nigh said the district is looking into livestreaming the event for those who can’t make it in person.

One part of last year’s festivities that Nigh said the district is hoping to keep this year is the parade of graduates through Ironwood. If the parade takes place, it is tentatively scheduled for May 28, the same day as the graduation rehearsal is planned. Nigh said the rehearsal is scheduled for 12:30 p.m., with the traditional senior walk through the school at 2 p.m., followed by the parade.

The district likely won’t have a kindergarten graduation, although some kind of smaller event is planned for those families.

“We just can’t have all the people in (the building),” Nigh said, regarding having a single graduation for all the kindergarten families.

The dates for other end-of-year events include: prom on May 8, the scholarship honors night at 6 p.m. May 19, and the athletic awards night at 6 p.m. May 26.