SAN BENITO — Another set of seniors is gearing up to commemorate their time as a Greyhound and begin a new chapter in their lives.
The commencement ceremony for the San Benito High School Class of 2021 will be held on Friday, June 18.
The San Benito CISD Board of Trustees approved a revision to the 2020-2021 school calendar on Tuesday during a board meeting.
The ceremony was originally scheduled to be held on June 24.
However, the trustees requested that the high school conduct a survey for parents and students to select a date due to changes that were made to the academic calendar during the year because of the pandemic.
San Benito High School Principal Rudy Ramirez said a total of 229 students and 223 parents voted.
Approximately 181 student votes were made for the June 18 option and 175 parents selected that option as well.
A total of 48 students voted for the June 24 option and 48 parents voted for that one as well.
According to Ramirez, the survey went through a verification process.
“With the parents’ side, we made sure the survey results were checked to ensure there were no duplicate votes and those that were submitted were also tied to one individual student and not multiple students,” he said. “Students’ votes were also checked to ensure only seniors voted and that they were seniors that were in fact graduating this school year.”
According to Ramirez, there are a total of 635 anticipated graduates this year, which includes 56 early graduates and 21 potential three-year graduates that are still pending some requirements to be eligible to graduate this year.
“This leaves us with really 558 true senior level graduates, meaning we have more like 41 percent of those students vote, which is a pretty sizable part of the population,” Ramirez said. “We felt pretty good with the feedback that we’ve already garnered from the survey.”
In addition to the survey, Ramirez said he garnered responses from staff and met with senior class officers to gain their input.
He added that all 10 senior class officers were in favor of having the ceremony on June 18.
“We tried to reach as many people as possible,” Ramirez said. “Our senior level teachers were also very much about pushing the survey to their kids in their classrooms so that they helped us as well. It was an all around effort to try and get as much feedback as possible.”
