Coronavirus took a Sacramento high school’s spring. How teachers honored the seniors

These are the important years, someone once sang, the days of yearbooks and spring dances and the cap-and-gowned procession to the podium.

The coronavirus stopped that in its tracks, snatching spring away from a nation of high school seniors. Prom nights and memories of seniors’ final spring semester are being exchanged for distance learning and stay-at-home orders.

But Tiffany Vaughn was determined that her school’s seniors will have milestones and memories to share. Vaughn is Florin High School’s activities director and is one of this week’s Unsung Heroes.

“For me, it was, ‘What are the ways that I can show them that each of them matter?’ At this school, each one of them matters,” Vaughn said late Thursday afternoon.

Vaughn didn’t do it alone, however. A team of Florin High staffers were hard at work planning a parking lot presentation of graduation caps, gowns and prom gifts along with a salute to the school’s senior student-athletes whose seasons the coronavirus contagion had taken away.

“I can’t give them prom,” she conceded before an event this week. “But I can do the best I can.”

Sacramento's Unsung Heroes

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The event, held this week in the school parking lot, was a drive-through affair in accordance with physical distancing; cars as stand-ins for benches and bleachers and rows of auditorium seats. Caps and gowns were handed to seniors through car windows as horns honked in a celebratory scene.

“Socially distant, but face-to-face,” Vaughn said.

Florin High School’s spring Gala was just a week away when Elk Grove Unified School District announced in March that it was suspending the school year. The theme of this year’s gala is all too ironic now: “Passport to Gala: An International Evening of Travel.”

The Class of 2020’s commencement ceremony is also up in the air like just about everything else in our new shelter-in-place existence.

The district’s school shutdown order was a definite setback, but the gala venue was more than accommodating when Florin broke the news, she said, and school officials across the district held out hope that students would be back in class before too long.

“We didn’t anticipate us not coming back. I was still planning their prom while we were in this limbo period,” Vaughn said. “All of us activity directors were figuring out what that would look like, trying to figure out what was realistic to do for their kids.”

A hopeful Florin High moved its spring gala to mid-May. Then the governor’s stay-at-home order was extended indefinitely.

Vaughn said planning Wednesday’s event took on a different dynamic: honoring students and acknowledging their milestones while not amplifying their feelings of missing out on their final semester at Florin.

“But it’s not only for them, it’s for our community. They can see how we’re doing something for our kids. We couldn’t do this without our community,” she said. “We want them to be able to see that they matter and that this matters.”

DJ’s and music greeted the senior class. Their teachers were there to cheer them on from the sidelines.

“We want it to be a celebration. It’s the first time they will have seen some of their teachers in weeks – teachers they will keep in touch with the rest of their lives,” Vaughn said.

“We want them to know they are cared for, not just by me, but by everyone here. They are what makes us Florin High School, so that’s my goal.”

This story was originally published May 2, 2020 at 5:00 AM.