WLB may have graduation ceremony at Monmouth U.
Heat during last year’s
ceremony prompts district officials to consider option
By Sherry conohan
Staff Writer

WEST LONG BRANCH — The school district is weighing whether to move the eighth-grade graduation from the Frank Antonides School to Monmouth University.

Superintendent Joan Kelly sought and received the Board of Education’s blessing at its Nov. 13 meeting to survey the parents of students in the seventh and eighth grades to measure their feelings on such a move.

The problem is heat. Students, parents, grandparents, other guests and faculty sweltered through the graduation ceremony on a particularly hot day last year in the non-air-conditioned gymnasium of the Frank Antonides School.

Kelly said it was so hot a child on the stage almost fainted. She said she was particularly concerned about grandparents and other elderly guests.

Larry Farley, principal of the Frank Antonides School, which houses fourth through eighth grades, said later he had visited Monmouth University and found that the air-conditioned Pollak Theatre would be available for graduation. He said the school district and university have excellent relations.

Farley said it was "brutally hot" for last year’s graduation.

"We tried fans and everything, and they didn’t do it," he reported.

Mary Gassman, president of the board, remarked that the last time the question of moving graduation came up four years ago, the students didn’t want to leave the school. But, she observed, times are different today.

Kelly said she knew it was a sensitive issue because many of the students want to graduate from the stage at the Frank Antonides School.

One of the board members volunteered that she thought it would be nice if graduation was held at Monmouth University and said her graduation was held at Brooklyn College.

Kelly said the seventh and eighth grades are large and the current fifth grade is even larger. The eighth grade has 92 students and the seventh grade 96.

If the parents indicate in the survey they want to go to Monmouth University, she said, the school district will do it there for one year and judge how it goes.

"I don’t think that if we do it one year, we’re committed to do it henceforth," she told the board.