001right good evening thank you everybody was able to join us this evening to talk about the end of the year celebration for the seniors this is a really busy time of year but trying to plan a celebration for our seniors is a good busy we're all really enjoying it and things are starting to come together we have been we were waiting for the final guidelines from the city of northampton and to come through to make the final decision about where the celebration for the seniors would be the graduation and the celebration and so the city of northampton has decided to adopt the state's guidelines which allow 500 people for an event like graduation or an outdoor event like graduation so we decided to go with look park and have the graduation ceremony in the pines
002theater there and along with that we are going to we've also rented the six pavilions that are available to be rented at look park and so that allows us to have more folks which is one of the which is how we can have families in the park during the ceremony which is something we really are feeling strongly about and happy that is that that piece of it is able to happen so i i'm excited right now and trying to catch my train of thought it's been a long day you know good good busyness is that all right so the plan is for the graduation ceremony to happen on thursday june 10th now originally in the beginning of the year you saw the calendars it was planned for june 11th when we thought it was a
003possibility we could have it at the mullin center but now we decided to go with an outdoor celebration because we still we can't have an indoor event excuse me at the moment or anywhere else for that matter that could accommodate all the people we anticipate all of our graduates and their families so we're going to go with look park so the way the day is planned out there's a lot of details that still have to be decided and this camera and the subchurch and miss hager will talk to you a little bit while in a little while about some of those details and you'll be up have a chance to fill out a survey i'm going to try to quickly go over the overall view of the day and within that there will be certain
004pieces of it that will be filled in when we get the results of the survey back so the exact times are pieces that we will fill in once we get the survey back as well but on thursday june 10th unless it rains then if it rains the rain makeup the rain dates are either going to be monday the 14th or tuesday the 15th but for right now we're obviously planning it for thursday june 10th so the day will start out the seniors will show up at look park and they'll have their rehearsal that day and then after the rehearsal we'll provide some lunch for them and they'll be able to hang out with one another of course we're going to make sure that everyone is safe and distant and enjoying one another's company and then
005after that goes on for a little while everyone has a chance to eat then families will start to show up and we're figuring out a system for where each of the families will be at the different pavilions and then once the families show up all of the seniors will enter the pines theater will have the graduation ceremony we're shooting for a short but meaningful ceremony without quite as many speeches or quite as much proper circumstance but with just as much meaning and just as much love and attention and you know and celebration that we normally have and after the graduation happens then students will be again allowed to they'll be have time to socialize and mingle with their friends and families who will be spread out and kind of jumping all over the place a
006little bit but all the families will be spread out at the six pavilions and how we're gonna organize that will be explained as we go through tonight's presentation so after the ceremony happens and in the pines theater and again in the interest of time and everybody having the same experience and giving students as much time to socialize with one another safely as possible we're going to have in the way the limit to what as many people can be in the pines theater all of the families who will be in look park will be watching the graduation from up to a live stream at one of the pavilions whatever pavilion they end up at and then so after the excuse me the students leave and finish the graduation and have their diplomas then they're going to
007be able to go and socialize with each other with their families take pictures and hang out for a certain amount of time then approximately you know maybe 6 ish 6 30 ish families will start to leave the park and then the seniors will be provided at dinner and then we're going to have another celebration for them we plan on having music in the pines theater for the students who want to stay in the pines theater and dance and socialize at least three feet apart with the mask on and we will also still since we've rented the pavilion to have them all day and right next to the pines theater there is you know a volleyball court a small field a basketball court the other pavilions the playground so students will be able to socialize with
008one another there if they don't want to and they be able to hear the music from there as well so they can dance in the field or they can dance inside of the pines theater where they can hang out and do other games and the other activities that a lot of them will organize and you know really is designed so they can really enjoy their company making a whole day event to try to end the year on the most positive note that we can it was kind of a quick explanation but once your seniors get the survey you'll be able to see in there excuse me some of the details that you'll be able to choose so we can finish our plans and then once the plans are finalized everyone will be sent kind of
009a you know agenda of the day and with specific times and what will be expected of the seniors and their families and how the day will really go of course as we're going through this if you're thinking if i did go too fast you want me to repeat something else questions pop up please put them in the chat we'll do our best to answer all your questions this evening all right speaking kind of fast sorry if i lost some folks but now i'm going to turn it over to this camera hello everybody thanks so much for being here i'm delighted to be here for the same reason that mr sadiq um is delighted to be here this is this is a you know a celebration and we're excited to be able to do this yeah
010we did look at a lot of different venues and this one really seemed to serve all of our purposes so there's a couple things that are going to happen the class council is going to create a sign up genius for the pavilions okay and so um more to come on that but the idea will be that families will go ahead and sign up for the individual pavilions um and then we'll receive a sort of colored armband and you'll go to that pavilion which which is where you'll be watching this the live stream um currently we have a plan to have again the live stream at all six different pavilions and then we'll staff those pavilions with some technology staff to manage that so the idea will be the screen will be big because folks will
011have to be distanced at those pavilions so those screens are going to be pretty big um the good news though is that at each pavilion we can have 150 people i do see that there are some questions coming up and i will we'll answer them all at the end but i can answer amanda right now and say right now there will be fix there will be five tickets per graduate however the next thing that i'm about to say is we're going to send out a survey and this is a survey for students and the survey it's really really important that every single senior respond to this survey and their survey is going to ask some clearly very important questions number one are you planning to attend graduation right there's a chance you might not be
012able to attend graduation um and so it would be important for us to know that okay and then if you are attending how many people are you planning to bring so again the idea is five tickets per person but you know there are plenty of uh students that have really large families and so if you know for a fact that you're only planning to bring four students or sorry four guests then our hope would be you'd be willing to put those two tickets back into the pool for families that are much larger okay but again um it's right now it's five tickets per student now there's a chance the regulations in the cdc regulations and then northampton and state regulations might change and then that would change this a little bit so right now it's
013five tickets um so that's sort of the second question um we also want to know what kinds of performances students want in the ceremony itself so that is another question we're also going to ask what type of food are you interested in catering are you interested in food trucks and then the last question we're going to ask is what kind of music would you like would you like a dj would you like a band so those are the questions that we're looking to ask in that survey so it's a really important that folks fill that survey out it's also really important that once you get the sign up genius for those pavilions that you fill that out as well and more will come on that from the class council directly so right now what i
014want to do is i want to turn it over to um liz and britney who are our class advisors they've been working really hard on this and this is a this has been a tricky year for the two of them um and they're getting you know hundreds of emails a day about this and so it's one of the reasons we decided to go ahead and have a um a meeting so we could get the information disseminate the information all at once um so they're going to talk to you a little bit about um the parent group activities that are happening and as they talk about this parent group this parent volunteer group i'm going to go ahead and put some links into the chat regarding the parent activities so over to liz and brittany britt
015you want to go first go ahead sure um so yeah no problem uh brittany up church as miss cameron said class council advisor um and equally as excited to be talking about a very special moment um for all of our seniors uh in june just a few three short months away would you like me to get started ms hagan with some information all right so um we had an opportunity to uh meet with becky demling and sally fitz on some parent-run endeavors to celebrate our seniors and a couple of things that we talked about were endeavors that the whole community can get involved in to to celebrate our students to honor our students and definitely give them um you know some some moments to remember as they transition on from amherst regional high school so
016one of the first uh um you know endeavors i suppose you could say that we talked about were either window signs or lawn signs for each senior as well as signs uh to go out on the on the common in town um very similar to what was done last year for the class of 2020 and in doing so each you know graduating senior will have a sign for their home um we'll have signs to go neighborhoods and apartment complexes signs for the common and then also including some signs in downtown um similar to last year a large banner and even some light post banners um that are going to be put up in and on display for a couple of days if not a week or two um another um activity or endeavor that we
017spoke with with these two about was the car parade again something similar to what was done for the class of 2020 but i know that they're looking to put a couple of different twists on it um to make it really special for for our group of seniors this year um and one of the last um you know activities if you will that we talked about in regards to our seniors was a june 4th ice cream social so um it's a tradition that on the last day for seniors once they have been dismissed that they head out into the parking lot and they have an ice cream social with their peers um and this has gone on um every year that i've been at the high school and again something that this group of parent volunteers
018was looking to make sure that we expanded upon um and had for for our kiddos this year in a in a safe and regulation safe way um this june so i know that miss camera has put some links in that maybe you're already starting to click on and look through um i don't know if miss hagen would like to chime in at any point or i can continue here with fundraising goals and kind of where this parent group is at oh you're muted miss sega i want to thank everybody who's been on this call um most of you know me liz haygood i'm the class of 21 2021 advisor with miss upchurch and i especially wanted to give a shout out to our student class leaders they know who they are and i know you
019know who you are and they've been working really hard with us and um trying to keep a pulse on everything and answering as many questions as they possibly can i think it's very important that you reach out to ms demilling misfits and the committee that they have if you're a parent they're trying to really really help us make this a meaningful year for our students and our children and so they have a goal of raising money they're asking for like thirty dollars per family or as much as you can give in order to help some of the defray the cost of some of the things that they're trying to make put together for our students and um so if you wanted to reach out to them i'm not sure they can't be on the call
020so they can't speak i guess but um you should email if you don't if you can't get a hold of them you can email me or mrs upchurch miss cameron mr sadiq and we would forward your email to them so that they can get back to you i think that's it for now please pay attention to miss cameras emails on all the things that you can do in order to get a hold of the parent group and if anybody has questions they can also email them or email one of us thank you brittany and liz um that's great so if you look in the chat you'll see that i put the there's a volunteer sign up um as well as one option would be to contact becky demling directly at beckydemling yahoo.com there's also an
021opportunity here to donate if you'd like to donate there is a gofundme here in the link in the chat excuse me we will also send out an email with a lot of this information in it and we'll include these links as well so i'm going to go ahead and shift directions a little bit now back towards mr sadiq who's going to talk about returning school supplies and then we'll head into an opportunity for questions and answers all right thank you camera so seniors your last official day of school will be friday june 4th so that week is a short week because may 31st that monday is memorial day but june 1st through the 4th at any time after school once you are finished with your books and chromebooks we're asking to please bring them to
022the school there'll be people here up until at least four o'clock on most days if the if between after school and four doesn't work please email either myself or the arhs office dot at arps.org and let us know what time that will work and we'll make sure somebody's here to receive the supply that you bring back um yeah it's really that whole week that we're asking you guys to bring back and then of course on friday june 4th will be ice cream social and the celebration will start okay so yeah i was going to say what else you want whatever you want to add and then we'll move to question and answer go ahead so also on june 4th i i do believe is when we'll be handing out caps and gowns so keep that
023in mind as well okay oh go ahead sorry miss camera and the only other thing that i i wanted to add was that you know we had a conversa excuse me a conversation a couple weeks ago now and i said you know the phrase it takes a village has really taken different shape for me over the last year so i think if you're hearing this and you're excited about some of the things you know coming up for yourself as a student get your your families involved in and help miss devlin and miss fitz and all the others on this parent committee that are putting forth some time and effort to make these these things happen for you right and if you're hearing this as a parent or a guardian or family member get involved you
024know we need your help we want your help our kids our students deserve the help um so anything that you can do nothing is too small whether it be monetary or of course your assistance at any of this so just keep in mind that you know as the sun starts coming out more and we're moving into spring weather we want to make sure that we're enjoying each other outside in some of these wonderful ways as often as we can and as safely as we can so definitely reach out and get involved okay so i'm going to go ahead and move into the question and answer um section of this and i'm going to start with i think is grant powicky um grandpa wiki is asking will this dance celebration be in lieu of a prom
025mr siddique would you like to answer that question sure so it will be in louisville prom so right now the regulations on the prom are pretty strict and we thought this would be the our best alternative we're going to have a chance to provide food to allow all the seniors a significant amount of time to dance and celebrate and we're thinking of ways to make it a little more fancy like potentially having like a red carpet and a dj maybe announcing people as they walk in walk back into the pine state after graduation for the prom dance party portion of it definitely opened ideas on ways again to make it more prom like and more fancy people are of course they can dress up they can have their dress clothes underneath their uh their cat
026their gown or their family they could have leave their clothes with their families and then change afterwards would be totally up to you but yes this is this is what we're going to do instead of how many guests will be permitted per graduate um as of right now it is five per graduate um again there'll be an opportunity to to get some additional ones out of a bank hopefully and there's a chance that the state and city regulations may change so we'll see right now it's five so someone's asking for a translation of this i don't know if you tried to turn on closed captioning and then translate it into spanish that's an option if that's not working right now we certainly can do that once this is being recorded so once it's been recorded
027i can have it translated and then send it out as part of the email um amanda you know i have to ask this question you deserve to put this here who is amanda demling and norris harris's response is some lady uh i think we know who amanda i'm pretty sure you know who your mom is so i have to put that up because it's hilarious um logan return of the dj chromebook that is absolutely possible and it's an interesting idea i would encourage you to go ahead and write to the class council let's see um another really interesting question from amanda you you know you deserve this you put them in the chat i'm gonna put them up can we go pass fail for this quarter i'm not vibing i'm pretty sure your colleges would
028frown upon that but it's funny um okay susan will there be places for students to change get ready at the park the answer to that question is yes there are bathrooms at every pavilion this one is a good question i'm not sure i know the answer to that question i know that dogs are allowed in the park um but i think we might have to get back to you on that one unless someone else has an answer yeah i'm not exactly sure but if your family yeah we'll have to check and get back to you i want to answer prematurely and then have to tell you oh by the way it's changed but we'll get back to you about that one thanks well graduation be live stream to houses as well it's going to be
029live streamed throughout the world anybody in the world can watch this woohoo um okay will seniors be able to bring a guest or a date to the celebration the answer to that one is going to be in no just because the space doesn't allow for um additional folks logan says he was joking i wasn't joking um okay graduation is going to be at look park in northampton thank you shannon for answering that that's a really good question are baby toddlers required a ticket for entry to the graduation i'm going to go with a no on that what do you think mr sadiq would say no as well so they'll be at they'll be allowed to be at the pavilion with their family yeah i gotta believe that that will be fine for what under one
030and under i'd say yeah i mean babies who are being held by family members are sort of part of one person okay i'm gonna wait a few more minutes for additional questions to see if they're coming in so while we're waiting for questions i'll just like to remind everybody again so we're going to send out the survey in the next day or two and the sooner we can get this back assuming we can finalize the plans and then get everyone in the same page about exactly what that day will look like and give families the time to really plan and figure out how many extra tickets we'll have so families who need we want more than five tickets can have them and then we'll get a more accurate number of how many folks will really
031be at the graduation ceremony so we can start preparing for the and buying the food and reserving the food there's a lot of graduations happening in this area right there and there's like a limited number of food trucks if we go in that direction because we learned that the food trucks that can come into the park have to be licensed in not only in the state but also by the town of the city of northampton so that again as soon we can get kind of final numbers and make those get those final pieces of the puzzle figured out the better chance we'll have you know having more options better options for those pieces so will the park be reserved for the graduation events or just the graduation events the answer to that question is mostly
032yes we have rented all of the pavilions however there's some central space that's going to be used for athletic events i think that there's lacrosse happening um so there will be other folks at the park but very few um will entrance to the park be free i think the answer to that is yes we're covering the cost of that for sure are there things that family and friends who can't be there can do to celebrate and support graduates that's a great question hmm does anyone have thoughts about that that's a big question all right so we are happy to say that they can watch the live stream of the actual ceremony itself which i think is great but yeah guys in terms of other things that they may be able to do um one of
033the things they can do is get a hold of miss stemling and misfit and work through them as the parent group to help support that other endeavors as we continue to try to um work out graduation celebration type things because they have a different type of celebration going on for the students and i think they're doing a wonderful job and coming up with ideas to support each other so if you have some ideas you can drop them into us or drop them into um miss emily or miss fitz and we can figure out who is going to take on that what are the hours for the whole situation like rehearsal to end of celebration so we have rented all of the pavilions for the whole day um excuse me if i step out of turn
034mr sadiq but i'm thinking we're gonna have rehearsal sometime mid-morning and then graduation is going to be sometime late afternoon and then we'll have the park all the way until 8 30 when they close at sundown what does a handicap access look like for guests in the graduation ceremony itself great question miss upchurch you are studying that pretty carefully do you want to answer it otherwise i can sure um so we looked into how many handicapped spots there were you know close to pavilions right when you come in closer to the pines just throughout the park but we've also discussed bringing our golf cart our district golf cart over to the pines so that we can help to transport guests to the pavilion that they've reserved their spot in but certainly happy to discuss with
035anyone any you know particular questions or concerns about a family member or guest um to the graduation ceremony so if that doesn't quite answer your question feel free to reach out and we can discuss how we'll best accommodate getting everyone where they need to be safely what's the date and time of graduation so it is thank you susan thursday june 10th and then the rain dates are june 14th and 15th the time is still to be determined um we're going to base that a little bit on the responses to the stir the survey that the students fill out so um so for now we're gonna say late afternoon you're welcome will the train be running now that i cannot answer but since the park is open i'm gonna guess it is but i will ask
036that question becky are you hoping to ride the train is really my question um okay i'm gonna put this up here just so everybody can see it thank you susan i'm going to give another minute for questions and then we will wrap up so when we do communicate again with families about the the agenda for the day we'll find out like what will be available like if there because there's also like a snack bar there there's also other activities and things that are that are on the site and we'll find out which ones will be open and which ones people have access to and we'll also let people know about the food situation catered or lunch trucks etc i just wanted to add while people are asking about [Music] their questions that this is being
037recorded and it's going to be up on our website so if i know there's some people that couldn't be here tonight for this meeting so if you know of somebody who couldn't be here have them log on to this um this um oh my god event i call it i guess and then if they have if they have additional questions they can direct them to um any of the four of us and we'll get you the correct answer grant you're asking the million-dollar question are parents only allowed to watch from pavilions or can they be in the theater unfortunately the theater is not big enough to have additional guests um with all the graduates we can only provide um it could only be one guest and that felt deeply problematic to us to have only
038one guest given how families operate and so the event will be streamed in into all of the pavilions and so all of the families will have the same exact experience so yes that's a great question it's a really hard question and we don't love the answer to it but given the times it is what it is um becky is letting us know that the link will also be in the pgo newsletter this friday thank you very much becky thank you becky and if the train's running i'll go i'll ride with you back [Laughter] i'll put some thank yous up here this sounds great thank you shannon thank you kim okay so i'm gonna look at the youtube channel right now quickly and see if there's other questions coming in that we might be missing no
039becky is saying it's a date ms haygood in case you're wondering fabulous okay so thank you so very much i think you at this point know how to get a hold of us um if you are if you have additional questions um go ahead and reach out to us and we'll be in touch i'm going to put up some mess i'll put some more thank yous up here so folks can see them because those of us that are in the back room here can't see all of these so i think it's important to see thank you stacy it's good to see you shannon would like to ride the train too and yes congratulations tala this is all good this is good all right thank you so much enjoy your evening yeah thanks everybody take care
040thank you for joining us and thank you for congratulations take care