Graduation back to Temple
By LEE PROCIDA
Cherry Hill Sun
12/28/2007

After scheduling conflicts and rainouts, East and West to hold ceremonies at Temple’s Liacouras Center on same day

The Cherry Hill Board of Education announced Cherry Hill High School East and West would have their graduations on the same day – June 19, 2008 – at Temple University’s Liacouras Center. East will hold its graduation at 11:30 a.m., while West’s will be at 4:30 p.m.

District Public Information Officer Susan Bastnagel said the move to have both ceremonies on the same day raised eyebrows among PTA members because of the length of time students graduating in the morning would have between the ceremony and Project Graduation.

Due to the district’s academic calendar and a scheduling conflict with the Liacouras Center, though, Bastnagel said they had to keep both ceremonies the same day. She also said in the future, the board would address this problem.

This is the second year in a row the district is holding its ceremony at the center after it stopped holding graduation ceremonies at Cherry Hill West in 2004. The decision to move the ceremony to another location came out of a disastrous graduation day in 2002, Bastnagel said, when a sudden downpour threw the event into disarray.

“It was a very bad situation,” she said. “The tickets had already been collected when it started raining, then everyone ran up to West to get in the building, but couldn’t because they didn’t have their tickets anymore.”

In 2003, East held its ceremony at the Tweeter Center in Camden, while West kept its ceremony at its own school.

After West’s ceremony was rained out that year, though, both schools went to the Tweeter Center in 2004.

Last year, both schools looked for other options, though, because the Tweeter Center could not commit to a date until late in the spring, which presented problems for scheduling Project Graduation. Bastnagel said the Liacouras Center was chosen after an extensive search that spanned east to Atlantic City, north to Newark and west to Philadelphia.

The Liacouras Center is cheaper than the Tweeter Center, the price difference more than offsetting the extra transportation cost to Philadelphia.

It also accommodated all the aspects the district was looking for, such as arena seating, secure parking, sufficient staging areas, the ability to accommodate two ceremonies in one day and, of course, air conditioning.

Most of all, Bastnagel said comments from parents regarding last year’s ceremony were positive.

“Last year’s ceremony went very well,” she said.