Sacred Heart School will hold a parking lot graduation ceremony Friday, May 22, at 4 p.m. The ceremony will be broadcast live over KROX with video available on the Sacred Heart Facebook page. Principal Blake Karas said they are excited to be able to hold graduation, the pinnacle of a high school career. “We’re really excited to bring our graduation to our students,” said Karas.“Obviously, it’s the pinnacle of your high school career. Early on, we started rolling with the ideas. As soon as we were unable to attend school or gather in groups, we instantly started thinking about graduation. 
What we’re going to end up doing is having a parking lot graduation. And I was thrilled to see last week when the governor’s guidelines came out on graduation ceremonies. He had a little paragraph outlining what we’d planned to do in our commencement ceremony.”
Students will be lined up in their cars, with space for an additional two vehicles per graduate to attend the ceremony, according to Karas. “We’re going to process into the parking lot in vehicles and have individual spots reserved for our graduates,” said Karas. “Our parking lot isn’t the biggest in the world, but there is enough room for each graduate to have two additional cars be parked in the parking lot. We’re requesting all of our guests to have windows up and be parked safely, so that they can stay socially distanced in their vehicles. Luckily, we KROX providing the avenue to get this out, so people that are unable to attend our ceremony can still listen live. And we plan to do a livestream of the event so that you can have audio and visual of our commencement ceremony.”
Traditionally, only the valedictorian at Sacred Heart speaks during the graduation ceremony. However, since the school was unable to have their senior breakfast, at which the salutatorian speaks, the salutatorian address will be included in the ceremony. Following the announcement of the scholarship recipients, Karas said students will proceed individually to receive their diplomas. “Students will have the opportunity to get out one-by-one, receive their diploma by themselves on stage and walk back to their vehicle before the next name is called,” said Karas. “And then we’ll present the Class of 2020, and they’ll be able to move on their way. We’re very happy KROX has decided to help us, and we can go forward with one of the highlights of a student’s career at high school.”
Karas, who built a model of the school and parking lot on the floor of his office using tapes and toys, said he spoke with graduates from 1997 who had their graduation moved to Crookston, and with current seniors to come up with the best plan for graduation. “When we started talking about how this graduation ceremony would look, I tapped into some resources from the graduates of ’97 that dealt with the flood twenty-some years ago,” said Karas. “Some of those are parents of our current graduates or students that go to Sacred Heart. That year, we moved the graduation offsite and had graduation in the Crookston Cathedral. And we got feedback – what was that like, what do you wish it would’ve become – just getting feedback. I had a ZOOM session early on with the 27 seniors and talked with staff about how important it was to keep the same day and keep the tradition as much as possible of what Sacred Heart does every year.”
Karas said he’s happy to have had support from parents, students, stakeholders, and staff to make this a meaningful graduation despite the effects of COVID-19. “I think everybody is kind of pumped up, and they’re just happy they have a light at the end of the tunnel and can really see that it is meaningful,” said Karas. “And the parents, staff, almost everybody can take part in this graduation ceremony as it should be. We’ll continue to try to find ways to honor this class. I think this class will be remembered as the Class of COVID-19 2020, and hopefully, is the only class affected by COVID-19. We’re just happy we’ve had tremendous support from our parents and stakeholders to help do some fun things for our graduates. They delivered banners, we had a drive-through for pickup of our graduation gear, and just some things that have been different but hopefully, meaningful to them as they end their careers here.”
Valedictorian: Madaline Mitzel
Salutatorian: Benjamin Goetz
HONORS STUDENTS
Sydney Anvinson
Lucy Bevelacqua
Macyn Bloom
Kathryn Brindamour
Ivy Edwards
Benjamin Goetz
Chenzhu Guan
Mallory Howe
Caden Knutsvig
Maria Kroeber
Madalin Mitzel
Grace Roberts
Aaron Steckman
Michael Suda
CANDIDATES FOR GRADUATION
Marcus Crayton
James Fontaine
John Fontaine
Ezrabella Haas
Anthony Jalan
Naomi Lee
Eric Mykleseth
Andrew Ogaard
Harrison Punton
Adam Shea
Luke Thompson
Kaitlyn Werner
Logan Wolf
