Schools
Middletown Schools' Graduation Venues Changed
Interim Superintendent Thomas Pagano cites cost, comfort issues
Graduations in the Middletown school district just won’t be the same this year.
The locations will change for the first time in many years.
Middletown North and South high schools’ 2011 graduation ceremonies will be held at Monmouth University’s Multipurpose Activity Center (MAC), West Long Branch. Meanwhile, Brookdale Community College will host the three middle school graduations, of Bayshore, Thompson and Thorne, on its Lincroft campus.
Find out what's happening in Middletownwith free, real-time updates from Patch.
Interim Superintendent Thomas Pagano made the announcements during Wednesday’s Board of Education meeting.
The PNC Bank Arts Center, in Holmdel, has hosted the high school graduations in the past, and was a contender for this year’s venue. Pagano explained the board’s preference for the MAC Center this year and probably in the future as a decision based on cost-effectiveness and comfort.
Find out what's happening in Middletownwith free, real-time updates from Patch.
“Let me give you the rationale behind these decisions,” said Pagano. “The expense to go to the PNC was excessive. The MAC Center represents a significant cost savings to the district. In addition to that, it is climate-controlled. It is a top-flight, first-class facility.”
While the PNC Arts Center seats 7,000 people, it is an open-air facility and 2,000 of those seats are not shielded from possible rain. Monmouth’s MAC Center opened in 2009 and seats 4,100 people. It has a 200-meter, six-lane indoor track. This June, 390 seniors are scheduled to graduate from High School North, and another 336 from High School South.
Pagano said that the district had originally planned to hold the Middle School graduation at Middletown South High School gymnasium. But the size of the anticipated crowds (1,400 in the stands and another 600 on the floor), along with the possibility of hot weather, raised doubts about the gym’s air conditioning capacity.
“With the number of people we would have had to put in there,” Pagano explained, “by the time you got to the third graduation in the gym — or maybe even the first — we were concerned about the comfort of the people in there, and the limited number of people we could get into there.”
