Evans High School Graduation Relocation – Austin’s Daily Commentary
Austin talks about the Evans High School graduation having to be relocated due to weather. Transcript: Austin: Friday night was supposed to be a night to remember for over 400…
Austin talks about the Evans High School graduation having to be relocated due to weather.
Transcript:
Austin: Friday night was supposed to be a night to remember for over 400 graduates from Evans High School. Unfortunately, very severe thunderstorms rolled through the area and the graduation that was supposed to take place at the Lady A outdoor pavilion did not. They had to move it inside to the very small, very much smaller, Columbia County Performing Arts Center.
Now, folks, ordinarily, if you've got a crowd that fits in that, facility, a venue, it would be awesome. Air conditioning. Very nice seats, beautiful views, bathrooms, the whole nine yards. But that's not the case when you've got, again, over 400 graduates.
The schools in Columbia County, you're not going to be getting any smaller. They're not building any more schools. They're going to be adding students. They're only going to be getting bigger, which means that this problem is never going to go away.
I think the time has come, to make the decision to permanently move graduations to the Civic Center, the James Brown Arena in Augusta. Unfortunately, the next two years not going to be able to do that because the arena is undergoing a rebuild. So for the next two years, Columbia County is going to have this issue.
What to do in the event of a thunderstorm on graduation day? And oh, by the way, not a lot of fans of outdoor graduations at Lady A's simply because of the heat and the humidity. I would suggest one of two solutions.
Number one, either having the graduations early in the afternoon or evening early in the morning, or perhaps, after 7:00. So you avoid most of the direct sunlight anyway. I understand that's probably going to create some, challenging schedule issues, but the bottom line something has to be done to improve the comfort of those attending in the daytime outside and the availability of an indoor facility if the rains do come.
Again, in the next couple of years, no James Brown Arena because of the rebuild. Columbia County needs to batten down the hatches. Rain outs can happen at any time. God bless the graduates. Sorry that it had to happen the way that it did. And that's the comment, I'm Austin Rhodes, 95.1 FM News Talk WGAC.
