La Conner Schools' staff 'adopts' its senior class members

It hasn’t been the best of springs for seniors at La Conner High and other campuses around the country.

The coronavirus has wreaked havoc with sports, prom and commencement exercises.

But La Conner Schools has come up with a clever way to honor its Class of 2020 graduates.

La Conner Middle and High School Assistant Principal Kathy Herrera went on-line last week to introduce the district’s “Celebrate the Seniors” project, scheduled through June 12, which was the date originally chosen for graduation ceremonies here.

For “Celebrate the Seniors,” the school staff is sponsoring one or two seniors each for whom they can provide cards, gifts, notes of encouragement and the like.

“It’s a pretty exciting opportunity,” Herrera told staff members last week.

They were quick to hop onboard. By Friday afternoon all students in the class had been adopted by staff sponsors.

Herrera said La Conner Schools is working with the seniors to develop a list of “favorites” that can help give sponsors ideas of what items to gift them.

“We’ve seen some really neat ideas,” Herrera said, citing yard signs, surprise gift boxes and colorful door decorations as examples.

“These are the things that they like,” she said of the ‘favorites’ list, “and will help brighten their day over the next month.

“I pushed out the information from the seniors’ favorites survey to all our sponsors,” Herrera added. “I expect that special surprises will start arriving at the seniors’ homes over the next week.”

Herrera said the primary focus of “Celebrate the Seniors” is to encourage class members to keep pushing forward despite their disappointment with COVID-19 school closures.

“We want to let the class know that we support them,” she said. “We know this isn’t what they were expecting rolling into their last month of school.”

With “Celebrate the Seniors” the class is now assured some pleasant surprises in what so far has been a cold and dark spring.