Sign up for Chalkbeat Newark’s free newsletter to get the latest news about the city’s public school system delivered to your inbox.Danielle Rose sat in her home on Monday night trying to figure out how to be in two places at once. Her son’s eighth grade graduation at Dr. E. Alma Flagg in the North Ward started at 9 a.m. Tuesday. His little sister’s pre-K ceremony at The Leaguers, a preschool provider contracted by Newark Public Schools, started at 9:45 a.m. downtown. But her son only had one request: He wanted both parents there. “In one moment, my husband is like, okay, I’m going to go to this one, then go to the other one. And then my son comes in and says, “Can y’all please both come?”Rose is not alone. In recent years, Newark parents with more than one student graduating have faced an impossible choice on what should be one of their family’s biggest days. The district packs dozens of ceremonies into the same time frame each June, resulting in scheduling conflicts, and during last week’s school board meeting, three members called it out publicly. Superintendent Roger León at the June 18 school board meeting said the fix has been having elementary school graduations in the morning and high schools in the afternoon. But he warned that venue shortages across the city make that a hard promise to keep. On Tuesday, high schools such as East Side and Arts still had morning ceremonies at the same time as elementary schools. León said the district’s hands are practically tied. The Newark Teachers Union contract requires the last day of school to also be the last working day for educators, León said. That means ceremonies can only happen on June 23 unless staff volunteer their time. Holding graduations before the last day, he added, “had increased attendance problems.”Newark resident Danielle Rose poses for a picture with her son, a graduate of Dr. E. Alma Flagg Elementary School, and her daughter, a graduate of The Leaguers Preschool.Those conflicts aren’t new. Two years ago, Yvonne Davis had the same problem and was forced to split up her family to celebrate a big milestone.Her son was graduating from Malcolm X Shabazz High School, and her daughter crossed the stage at Avon Avenue Elementary’s eighth grade ceremony, both at 9:30 a.m. At the time, she said she called the principal and raised her concern, but was told it was the scheduling decision of the school board, not the school.“I felt like the Board of Education should have considered that,” Davis said. “A lot of parents, we just got left out.”Davis, a single mother, went to her son’s ceremony while her mother and her children’s father covered her daughter’s. She only saw her daughter’s graduation in pictures and said that she knew at least three other parents that year who faced the same impossible split. My daughter “understood, but I wasn’t there,” Davis said. During the June meeting, board member David Daughtey said he had already heard from parents and other community members frustrated about having to travel to multiple venues across the city for overlapping ceremonies. He called on the district to separate elementary and high school graduations into different time frames, as it had done in the past, Daughety said. “I’ve already heard parents and community members reach out and ask and complain about all of it happening at the same time,” Daughety added. Board member Helena Vinhas during the meeting also said she raised the same concern last school year and urged the district again to, at a minimum, separate elementary graduations from high school ones. Yvonne Davis' children, Tariq and Samaiyah, pose for a picture during their 2024 high school and eighth grade graduations, respectively.“A lot of the families do have difficulty by having children graduating on the same day and having to choose which one to attend,” Vinhas said. Board member Kanileah Anderson proposed another solution during the meeting. She called for high school seniors and eighth graders to graduate on entirely different days while pointing out that families with children in both levels, increasingly common as the district pulls students from across city neighborhoods, have no realistic way to attend both. “We all know that that is impossible,” Anderson said. “So I’m looking forward to the discussion, and actually a change for graduation classes of 2027.”But León stopped short of a broader solution. He said high schools like Data Science and Information Technology are having their graduations in Montclair because of venue constraints. “So, the idea that we have to maximize the space becomes an important factor,” León added. On Tuesday morning, Rose and her mother, who traveled from New York, just made it to her son’s graduation at Alma Flagg after finding a parking spot. But by the time the ceremony was over and she got back in her car, she could not get back downtown in time for her daughter’s pre-K ceremony. Luckily, she had explained the situation to her daughter’s teacher who allowed Rose to take photos before the ceremony with her daughter, in case she did not make it back in time. “Unfortunately, no one was able to attend my preschooler’s graduation,” Rose said. Jessie Gómez is a reporter for Chalkbeat Newark, covering public education in the city. Contact Jessie at jgomez@chalkbeat.org.
