Reader opinion: School officials should consider lessons taught with in-person graduation during pandemic

Editor’s Note: This is an open letter to Hoover schools Superintendent Kathy Murphy from an alumnus of the Hoover High School Class of 2000 regarding the decision to host in-person graduation ceremonies during a pandemic. Letters to the editor can be sent to Jon Anderson at janderson@starnespublishing.com.

Dear Superintendent Murphy,

I graduated from Hoover High School 20 years ago as part of the Class of 2000 and am deeply concerned about the decision to move forward with in-person graduation ceremonies during a global pandemic.  

Along with being a Hoover High alum, I'm also a New York City public school teacher and have been helping to usher my graduating seniors through this crisis. So far, my small school community, with fewer than 100 students per grade, has already lost 30 community members to COVID-19. Thirty dead. Thirty families grieving.  

Many of my students have parents who are essential workers: grocery store clerks, nursing home attendants and food service workers. My students live with the daily fear that a parent might contract the disease. To get through it, we lean on our community for strength and support each other to process the collective grief. 

I've personally counseled students who have endured the spread of COVID-19 across their households — to their parents, grandparents and siblings. My students have watched their loved ones become hospitalized and be transferred to ventilators.  My students, graduating seniors like yours, have faced the painful consideration of what a future might look like without their families.

But I hear you are taking precautions. I hear you are ‘identifying protocols’ to ensure the health, safety and well-being of your graduates. Graduation is, after all, a pivotal point in our students’ lives. And Hoover is not New York.  

As an educator, I hope you consider the effects beyond just this pivotal ceremony. I hope that you consider what you are teaching our graduating seniors by moving forward with business as usual.  

For instance, have you considered the thousands watching this happen? The schools across the Southeast that are taking the lead from your prominent institution? As you move forward with business as usual, have you considered the many multi-generational family gatherings that will occur? The dinners out? The graduation parties? Have you considered the thousands of young adults that are taking cues from their leaders and making their own meaning of this momentous occasion?  

More importantly, have you considered the 20,000 that have died here in New York? Or the 90,000 nationwide? And the hundreds of thousands of health care professionals risking their lives each day? How about the vulnerable communities there in Birmingham? Here we have trucks full of bodies. Freezers parked outside the hospital.  

As the lead educator for our city, I hope you are considering what you are truly teaching my soon-to-be fellow alumni about what really is most important. I hope you are asking the Class of 2020, as you send them off into the world, to look beyond the self, exemplify empathy for those that have suffered, and consider the sacrifices others are making. I trust you are considering the remarkable opportunity to ask our seniors to walk in solidarity with thousands of others, like themselves, processing the meaning of this moment in history. 

I sincerely hope that you and the Hoover community are keeping your larger community in mind as you make your decisions. 

Anthony Voulgarides

Hoover High School Class of 2000