Graduation: a shared experience looked forward to by most since the beginning of high school, or even before that. But, many feel that the Biddeford High School graduation ceremony needs some major changes.

Among the many is principal Jeremie Sirois, who wishes to change graduation to make it more efficient, fun, and centered around the graduating class. This involves changing the seating arrangement, one that highlights the graduates rather than the speaker, and giving families of the graduates and staff members front row seats.

“The set up will be much different,” said Sirois. “We’re going to have it so the stage is farther back at Waterhouse, the kids sitting in front facing the stage.”

So, as opposed to the speaker facing the audience, the speaker will stand facing the graduates, who are facing the audience, with parents and staff sitting behind the speaker. His plans for the staff are much different as well.

“I’m trying to make it so staff come [to graduation] and, before the graduates come in, all of the staff will walk in so it’s just not people rolling in when they feel like,” said Sirois. “All of the staff will walk in, hopefully get recognized by people standing up and clapping, and then they sit off to the side so they feel more apart of it.”

His main concern about graduation, and others, respectively, was not the staff’s attendance or seating arrangements, rather the time duration of the ceremony. He has several ideas to make graduation more efficient, ensuring that “the length should be much shorter.” Teacher and junior class advisor Jayne Sheltra expresses her thoughts.

“I think the last couple of years the ceremony has gotten away from the whole group of the graduating class and more about having many, many, many speakers,” said Sheltra. “I think principal Sirois has some really good ideas about refining the process to make it all about the kids.”

So what does Sirois plan to do? For starters, there will be no introductions of speakers, and “speakers are definitely going to get cut down,” all of the speeches shortened to about 5 minutes.

“All speeches are going to come through me so that I can have a chance to look at them and know how long they’re going,” said Sirois. “You’re talking 70 minutes and we’re done.”

Scholarships will now be done at graduation, but in a much more efficient fashion. Specifically, a student’s name will be called, all of the scholarships they were awarded will be announced, the audience will congratulate them, and then the next person will be recognized.

“We’re just going to announce scholarships,” said Sirois. “There will still be a few at Senior Assembly, but it’ll shorten that now too having it this way.”

A dress code will also be in effect this year, as he expects “guys in a collared shirt, because it looks nicer with the gown” and he expects girls “dressed appropriately with shoes or sandals, not flip flops.” Additionally, guys cannot wear shorts or jeans and must wear more formal attire.

Junior Briana Collard, however, sees some good in previous graduation ceremonies that she’s attended.

“One thing I liked about graduation was how classmates would go up and share some memories with the teachers and their classmates that they had, and I liked that because it really brought the class together and made them think back of all the good times they had as a class,” Collard said.

Collard, too, felt that graduation was much too long, and, in order for Sirois to shorten the graduation ceremony, he had to rearrange some of the traditional graduation festivities.

“Class Historians will now be on Senior Assembly,” Sirois said.

In addition to the usual Senior Assembly and graduation ceremony, Sirois wants to add a new “a candle lit ceremony” he called the Senior Reception, where the class’s guest speaker will speak. he got the idea from his previous job at York High School, where he was the class speaker at York’s Senior Reception.

“It was just me, the class, and their families, it wasn’t everybody, so it was a little more intimate,” said Sirois. “I’m trying to figure out if we’re going to do this or not, if not this year than I’m hoping to do it next year.”

Sheltra believes that these changes are for the good of BHS and is interested “to see how all of it’s going to play out,” because it will definitely benefit her class when they graduate.

“For my class, it’s going to make their class advisor far less stressed and easier to deal with, so hopefully it’ll put smiles on their faces because I won’t be a basket case,” Sheltra joked. But, on a more serious note, Sheltra is very pleased with Sirois’s work with graduation.

“I’m glad they’re making changes to graduation…I think it’s a great thing.”