School board sets TCHS Class of 2019 graduation for June 1

By Kayleigh Rahn
The Tuscola Community High School Class of 2019 will march to “Pomp and Circumstance” at 7 p.m. Saturday, June 1.

The Tuscola Board of Education, during its meeting Monday, Feb. 25, set the high school graduation date and eighth grade promotion date – 7 p.m. Wednesday, May 29.

“They are later than we’ve had in the last eight years, but that is due to the school calendar,” Superintendent Michael Smith reported. This year, teachers and staff voted on a later school calendar, and the district has used two emergency days for winter weather with a potential for more to be used in the coming weeks.

“We like to have the grades done so that, especially for East Prairie promotion they can distribute awards and there is a finality about it,” Smith said. “I try to make it so that kids don’t have to sit in class for another week after graduation.”

The plan is for the first time in recent memory the graduation ceremony will have the Warrior Wall as the backdrop. That was made possible by replacing the mechanism to raise the basketball hoops.

Board member Darold Spillman, who voted against the dates, suggested setting high school graduation for one week earlier.

“I wish there was a best answer but there really isn’t one,” Smith said.

Student safety
East Prairie Principal Carol Munson introduced the board to the Student Safety Assessment System, which is a new approach Tuscola schools will implement to gage the level of threat when student safety may be in question. The resource allows the school to use a series of interview questions that will best guide administrators and school staff to determine a level of potential threat and whether there is a need for additional investigation, intervention, or support. The system has been in use in schools since 2002 and has become the best practice for schools, Munson said.

“These are things that we and all schools have dealt with many times with various types of threats–threat to others, threat to selves, all of those types of things, and we have been looking for a consistent way to assess the situation and decide what actions we’re going to take from there,” Munson said. “Everything the system presents we have done, but not in the same consistency and fidelity that this system offers.”

The full story can be found in the Wednesday, Feb. 27 edition of The Tuscola Journal.