Caps and gowns and masks and gloves: Lexington school celebrates seniors despite pandemic

When Zach Brown drove onto the STEAM Academy grounds Monday and saw the staff wearing masks and gloves and handing out caps and gowns to the Class of 2020, he said he felt like a graduating senior for the first time.

“This whole quarantine thing and the way that school ended so suddenly it just kind of seemed like a dream that you are just waiting to wake up from,” Brown, 18, said of the situation unfolding during the coronavirus outbreak.

However, Brown said the “sentimental” way teachers and administrators at Lexington’s STEAM Academy on Monday kicked off graduation season with a celebration for 85 seniors was a fitting recognition of “four years of my life and a lot of hard work.”

Monday’s event was not considered a graduation ceremony. But students said their teachers and administrators made them feel special as they arrived.

Photographs were taken of seniors wearing their caps and gowns at the school on East Sixth Street. They were given signs to put in their yards at home that announced they were graduating.

Students practiced social distancing in their cars. Still, senior Danielle Korsah-Brown, 17, said the celebration was “intimate in a good way.”

In-person classes at the Fayette school district’s special program for science, technology, engineering and math , and all public schools in the state, have been canceled since mid-March and won’t reopen this academic year. Students have been learning from home. Gov. Andy Beshear has said in-person graduation ceremonies won’t be possible in the short term and the Class of 2020 would have to settle on virtual and drive-in graduations.

Seniors at STEAM have in years past had the option of participating in graduation ceremonies with the main high school where they are assigned based on their home addresses. Fayette school officials had not said by Monday night how they are going to mark graduation at the districts six main high schools, but said an announcement is forthcoming.

Parent Davita Gatewood said her son Nkosi Commodore had missed out on so many senior year milestones during the pandemic that the efforts of Principal Tina Stevenson, staff member Geralyn Strange and others on Monday moved her to tears and made her smile.

“It made my day to see how above and beyond they went for my son,” Gatewood said.

Explaining the reasons the staff created the event for seniors, Stevenson said, “We all need some closure with each other.”

“They miss us. We miss them. We recognize that this has been an unusual end to the school year. We want them to know that we appreciate them being a part of our lives for four years and we want to wish them well,” she said.

“We’ve done our share of Zoom meetings. We’ve done our share of Google Meets,” Stevenson said, referring to online platforms. “But there’s nothing like actually seeing their face.”