Supt. Margaret Marotta: 2020 Graduation Need Not Be Completely Impersonal

Although different and less than ideal, this year’s Haverhill High graduation may not be as remote and impersonal as first feared.

Appearing on WHAV’s morning program Tuesday, Haverhill school Superintendent Margaret Marotta says the coronavirus has upset classes, modes of study and will mostly derail the scheduled June 5 graduation. She said, however, not all is lost.

“We hope to be able to have a graduation ceremony where we can hand each student their diploma with appropriate masks and social distance, and a number of 10 or 20 students come to an area, probably an outdoor area, at a time. They line up, six feet apart. We can tape it all. We can tape the speeches, put it into a nice presentation and hopefully be able to air it at the time graduation would have been.”

As WHAV previously reported, the superintendent is also working on various scenarios for classes in the fall if COVID-19 remains a concern. Marotta describes the best of several compromises.

“One of them that we are looking at is opening school with social distancing. That’s the most optimistic case. That would mean we are presently measuring all of our classrooms to determine how many kids we can fit in each classroom in each school with six-feet social distance, and we’re finding that leaves our schools at about half capacity.”

The superintendent says the situation may mean a rotation of school in September to allow for proper social distancing. No decisions have been made and other scenarios continue to be explored. 

Updated information will be available on the Haverhill Public Schools website at haverhill-ps.org

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