Bourne Officials Stand by Decision to Hold Virtual Graduation

BOURNE – With the Bourne graduation ceremony switching to a virtual format, school and town officials are reminding the public as to why they made the decision to cancel the in-person ceremony.

“There’s been a lot of difficult decisions and things we’ve had to evaluate since COVID hit back in March,” said Town Administrator Anthony Schiavi 

“Many of those decisions are difficult, they’re tough, we know that school has changed for the last four months for a lot of our students, particularly our seniors, but the decisions that we make are informed by data, and information.”

Schiavi added that when it comes to these decisions, Bourne takes a similar approach to that of Governor Charlie Baker.  

“If you’ve listened to the Governor through the entire pandemic and the decisions that he has had made that we all don’t necessarily agree with, he has always said that they’re informed by his public health experts, his medical experts, and we have to do that at the local level as well,” said Schiavi.

Bourne is one of a few school districts on the Cape to cancel their in-person graduation ceremonies this year.

Falmouth High School canceled their ceremony and held a virtual one instead after the school district said that several seniors were potentially exposed to COVID-19.

Nauset Regional High School also canceled their graduation ceremony because of the pandemic.

“We are assessing risk on a daily basis and sometimes that risk isn’t necessarily as concrete as people would like it to be,” said Schiavi.

“But I think this an opportunity for all of us, particularly the administration and our parents, to take this as a teaching moment to talk to our children about the difficulties that people in high pressure situations have to decide.”

Schiavi, who has a speech planned for the ceremony, noted that the decision was made with the intentions of protecting the community.

“Your leadership considers all avenues and not just the information that leads us to the decision that everyone might want but leads us to the right decision for our community,” Schiavi said.

Bourne’s virtual graduation ceremony is set to take place Saturday at 8:30 p.m.

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