FREEPORT – Freeport High School seniors will be headed to Portland for their graduation this spring.

The Regional School Unit 5 directors last week unanimously approved changing the date and venue of the high school’s class of 2013 graduation, which is now set for Saturday, June 15, at Merrill Auditorium in Portland, at 11 a.m.

The graduation ceremony had originally been set for Sunday, June 16, at the high school gym.

A larger-than-anticipated senior class was the impetus behind the change to the larger venue. RSU 5 Superintendent Shannon Welsh told the board at its Sept. 26 meeting that the district had anticipated a senior class of 129, but the actual number of seniors grew to 142.

A concern about a lack of seats in the traditional venue for the Freeport High graduation led school officials to seek a better alternative, especially after they learned that this year’s senior class was so large.

“It’s a pretty big deal,” Welsh said. “We’ve always held it at Freeport High School and it’s a big deal to move it off site.”

Welsh said she didn’t know the reason why the school’s senior enrollment jumped so drastically, saying that she has to wait until she gets enrollment numbers from other area high schools at the beginning of this month.

“We got 13 new seniors over the summer,” she said. “And that’s not typical, kids don’t generally change schools in their senior year. So, I have to wait to get the actual information to see if it’s kids who transferred from Brunswick High School to attend Freeport High School, (or) if it’s kids who came from private school into public school. I just don’t have that specific data yet.”

No matter what the reason for the jump, one thing is clear – this is a big senior class.

“That is the largest class that we’ve had graduate,” Welsh said. “Our gymnasium holds about 1,200 (people), and that’s where we’ve been holding graduation, but last year, we had to limit the number of people students can bring with them because there’s just not enough room.”

Senior class adviser Kimberly Medsker said last year’s seniors were limited to eight tickets each, a number that she said left many families struggling to accommodate all of their guests.

“Many families want to bring more than eight guests,” she said.

The school tried to find a place for the overflow crowd, but it wasn’t as well received as they hoped.

“Last year, we opened up the Freeport Performing Arts Center and set up a live feed so that we could use it as an overflow room, but families didn’t want to be in there, they wanted to be in there with the kids,” Welsh said.

Freeport High School Principal Bob Strong agreed that the Performing Arts Center wasn’t a popular option.

“It didn’t work out,” he said. “That wasn’t satisfactory (for the families), I think we had two adults and four young kids that were in (there) during graduation.”

Looking at the size of the class of 2013, school officials wanted to find a venue that would be large enough to accommodate the seniors and all of their friends and family even if that meant having to shift the date of the school’s graduation.

“So, with an increased class size, we were in some trouble,” Welsh said. “So we looked at what we could do to resolve that and the Merrill Auditorium was available. They just weren’t available on our (original) graduation date, they were available the day before.”

Strong said the school priced several venues, including the Cumberland County Civic Center and found Merrill was a reasonable option. Strong then checked with other schools to see what they did for their graduation, and the Portland hall got rave reviews. “The schools that used Merrill Auditorium said it was phenomenal,” Strong said. “The seating is great, there’s good visibility. We’re ecstatic (to be holding graduation there).”

The school polled the senior class and their families about the possible change in venue and found a great deal of backing for the move.

“There was strong support (among students and families) for moving it because families understood that more of their family members could attend,” Welsh said.

“Everyone has been really supportive of it,” Medsker said. ““I have not heard one student say they want it in the gym. The main reason that we even looked at changing the venue is that our numbers are so large now, our gym really wouldn’t accommodate the number of guests our students wanted to bring.”

But, Strong said, he didn’t believe there would be a major difference between having the ceremony in Portland and having it in the school gym.

“We figured that the cost wasn’t going to be any more than a couple hundred dollars that what we already spend for graduation,” he said. “Because we’re not going to have to rent chairs, we’re not going to have to use our custodians (and pay them) overtime to have them set up and break down (the gym).”

Medsker said the cost between the two venues is very close. Last year, the school spent $3,150 to hold the graduation in the gym, a cost that included chair rentals, decorations and hiring police for security. She said the school is spending $3,400 to rent Merrill for this year’s ceremony.

Medsker said she thinks the students will really enjoy the amenities of the new venue.

“And I think for them, it’s going to be great that it’s air conditioned, because they’re in their hot, polyester gowns and when you get 1,200 people in our school gym with no temperature control, it gets very, very hot,” she said.

Merrill Auditorium, located on Myrtle Street in Portland, has a capacity of 1,900, which is why the Regional School Unit 5 directors approved moving the high school’s class of 2013 graduation there.
Friends and family of the graduates in Freeport’s class of 2013 will have more room at the ceremony as the school has moved graduation from the gym to Portland’s larger Merrill Auditorium, a venue that has been used for many area graduations, including this recent Scarborough High School ceremony.