Spring Branch ISD Featured News

A special message to the Class of 2020

Dear Class of 2020 Seniors and Families,

With just about a month left of the school year, this is a time to congratulate and celebrate each of you and all you have accomplished to reach the very important milestone of high school graduation. This is also a time to acknowledge how sorry we are that the many ways you looked forward to celebrating together will have to look different this year.

But, this does not mean our celebrations of you will be any less meaningful or important! Working together with your principals and district leaders, and with input from your senior class student leaders, we have a great plan in place that will enable us to celebrate you all summer long! 

Our Summer Celebration of the Class of 2020 will include the following:

• May Celebrations
  Your high schools are planning some special things that you will hear more about from your high school principals. And, the district will include senior spotlights in communications and social media beginning in May and continuing through the summer.

• Virtual Graduations
  In mid-June, we will host a very robust Virtual Graduation experience, personalized for each school, that will include not only graduation traditions of a live graduation, but also the opportunity for seniors to include some personalized messaging, too! We are finalizing the details, and you will hear more about this very soon. We will need each of you to engage with us to make this happen!

• Graduation Ceremonies - While we cannot hold our graduation ceremonies as planned in May, we are hopeful that we can come together in some way for a live, in-person graduation experience later this summer. We have reserved July 22-25, at Don Coleman Coliseum, and will confirm your school’s date and time in the days ahead.

When I “Zoomed” with your class officers, I shared with them the “why” behind our planning and decision-making, and I want to share this information with you, too. First and foremost, we continue to be guided by local, state and national health and government leaders and agencies.

Our most recent direction came to us directly from Texas Education Agency (TEA) Commissioner Morath on a call with superintendents from across the state on Tuesday of this week. He stated that graduations with large gatherings are not currently allowed under our Governor's Executive Orders. He also stated that we may not receive guidance from the Governor for several more weeks.

Because everything related to how our society operates during this Covid-19 pandemic is fluid with guidance updated and changing often, we feel it is very important to have a strong plan in place including a virtual graduation experience to officially mark this milestone, just in case we cannot do something live in July. We typically spend an entire year planning for graduation, and we intend for the experiences we have planned in response to our current situation to be just as special, if different, from our usual graduations.

Much more information will be coming your way in the days and weeks ahead.

On behalf of all of us in SBISD, please know how very proud we are of each of you. The fact that we will celebrate you differently in no way diminishes all your hard work and all you have achieved in and out of the classroom, in UIL sports and competitions, in community service and leadership, and as friends, peers and role models.

I applaud you, and I congratulate you.  I personally promise we will do everything we can to make the Summer of Celebration for the Class of 2020 a special one.

With appreciation,

Jennifer Blaine, Ed.D.
Superintendent of Schools