MARLBOROUGH – Yes, the Marlborough High School (MHS) junior class is still hosting its annual prom.
Fears recently spread around rumors that the junior class was unable to fundraise enough to hold the event.
“We’re still planning on having a junior prom,” MHS Principal Dan Riley told the Community Advocate on Monday, though.
“I think the class officers were trying to communicate that they can’t hold a private venue,” he continued.
Riley explained that the junior class’ fundraising abilities were impacted due to COVID-19.
“The other thing a junior class has to think about is they’re also raising money for their senior prom experience,” he said. “When a class only has a little bit of funding, the spending on the junior prom experience impacts the senior prom experience.”
Class officers could have raised ticket prices to offset their deficit. But they decided against that as they believed it would outprice a majority of students.
“When we found out the financial issues, many of us came together and said we will make it happen,” Riley said. “Our goal as a school district is that we want to make sure that we can make this happen for them, and we want to make sure we can set them up well for senior year.”
After multiple years of disruption, Riley reiterated that that prom could generally look different as classes begin to return to normal fundraising levels.
Through this, he said, community support is what is necessary to promote a sense of normalcy among students.
“I believe that schools need to move themselves back in a direction of normalcy, and this is an area where communities need to come together,” Riley said. “We have to be creative in doing so.”
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