After a year without prom, Beaufort Co. schools are bringing it back — except for one
Saturday’s prom at May River High School will look different from normal: students will accessorize their dresses and tuxes with masks, and the crowd will be half what it was in 2019.
After spring 2020 passed without proms or in-person graduation ceremonies, Beaufort County School District’s six high schools came together in January to make a plan to reinstate both.
They settled on a universal set of COVID protocols for proms: Only seniors would be invited (though they can bring guests from other grade levels and schools), and students and staff will have their temperatures checked and wear masks at the dance.
With those guidelines in mind, five of the high schools will host proms in the coming weeks. Hilton Head Island High School will not.
‘One last memory’
Principal Steven Schidrich said the decision came down to a lack of interest from seniors. In two weeks, the school sold only 16 tickets to the prom. He said that to pay for the event space at Hilton Head Beach and Tennis, the school needed 200 attendees.
Schidrich said he believed students planned alternative events, as they had last year when the high schools canceled proms in the first wave of the COVID pandemic.
“We don’t want to make money on this, but we do want to break even, especially when you’re dealing with other businesses like Hilton Head Beach & Tennis,” he said.
Broderick Copeland, a December graduate of the school and the vice president of its senior class, took action after Schidrich announced the cancellation on April 19. She ran for office on a platform to improve prom, saying she had been looking forward to the dance since her freshman year, she said.
Schidrich told her that if she got 100 signatures on an online petition committing to attend the dance, he would reconsider the cancellation. She got that amount in less than 24 hours after opening the survey on Tuesday.
“I’ve gotten a lot of feedback from people saying ‘thank you for doing this, because I have a dress already, and I’ve spent $400, $500 already…’ I kind of just wanted everyone to have this one last memory,” Copeland said.
But on Thursday morning, Schidrich said it was “too late at this juncture to plan an alternate prom date” due to lost contracts for the canceled May 8 prom date and impending exams and graduation ceremonies.
Copeland said she was “very disappointed” by the news, but did have one bright spot to look forward to: a local photographer who saw her petition offered to take pictures of her and her friends in their prom attire.
Prom 2021 plans
Todd Bornscheuer, principal of May River High, said anticipation for Saturday’s prom was a “shot in the arm” for the school’s morale: “It’s buoyed our entire climate.”
Chad Cox, principal of Battery Creek High, agreed.
“In certain years, I have to make sure I rally the staff and have enough people at prom,” he said. “But now, because of capacity, I had to put a cap on the number of staff I allow to come to prom.”
Both schools are expanding the prom from the gym to outdoor areas to promote social distancing, and hiring more security as a result. Cox said that his school will also have a photo booth and food distributed to attendees by other students in the school’s culinary arts program.
“I think the main thing is, just like graduation, the kids saw last year’s group not get to experience this,” Cox said. “So we’re just grateful for any opportunity to celebrate the kids and get those critical experiences before they graduate high school.”
This story was originally published April 30, 2021 at 4:55 AM.