Members of a Fairfax County School Board committee have postponed consideration of what restrictions, if any, should be placed on student mortarboards during graduation ceremonies.
“We’ll come back to it,” Hunter Mill District School Board member Melanie Meren said at the May 27 meeting of the board’s governance committee.
Currently, some high schools across the county permit students to personalize their caps with decorations for graduation ceremonies, while others do not.
Even if committee members could reach a consensus opinion to send on to the full School Board, “it’s not going to be in effect for this year’s graduation,” Meren noted. Not having that looming deadline will give the committee, and ultimately the full school board, time to vet the matter fully, she said.
Members of the governance committee are in the process of updating a number of policies, including the one related to graduation ceremonies. At an April meeting, committee members directed Fairfax County Public Schools Superintendent Michelle Reid and staff to come back with recommended wording related to a number of graduation issues, including apparel.
Mason District School Board member Ricardy Anderson expressed displeasure that staff follow-up was not provided in time for the May 27 meeting.
“We had a big discussion last time regarding a number of topics that we were supposed to get back to, including decorations of mortarboards,” Anderson said.
Superintendent Michelle Reid said discussions were being held with principals to get feedback on options.
“To my knowledge, they have not reached a decision on what that will or won’t entail,” she said.
Reid said any decision on mortarboard decoration probably should be part of a staff regulation rather than formal School Board policy, something Anderson pushed back on.
“The Board can have an opinion … [on] the broader framework,” she said.
During discussions, a number of committee members said their preference was for a blanket countywide policy.
“It’s important that there’s consistency,” said Braddock District School Board member Rachna Sizemore Heizer. “Either we allow them for everybody or we don’t allow them at all.”
“I know schools have their traditions — some have allowed it and some have not,” she said. “That’s an unfair and inequitable system. It’s easier not to [allow decorations], but either way, I think we need consistency.”
Reid did not offer an opinion during the meeting. Since becoming superintendent, though, she has pressed for consistent application of policies to make FCPS what she terms a “school system” rather than a system of schools.
On the mortarboards issue, Meren echoed that theme.
“It should be consistent,” she said of the policy. “We’re trying to be consistently consistent.”
While school board members haven’t mentioned any specific issues that have cropped up during their discussions of the graduation policy changes, some college students around the U.S. have recently used their cap motorboards to send political messages, particularly to protest Israel’s war on Palestine.
As part of proposed revisions to graduation policies that are headed to the full school board for consideration, elected officials would no longer be able to serve as graduation speakers in a year they are seeking reelection.
The prohibition would also apply to candidates for any elected office, who wouldn’t be permitted as commencement speakers in the same calendar year in which they seek election.
