ORANGE PARK, Fla. – On Monday, teachers and staff at St. Johns Country Day School in Orange Park decided to honor its senior class who had the rest of their school year taken away due to the coronavirus pandemic.
This after Gov. Ron Desantis announced this weekend that school campuses would remain closed for the rest of the school year.
The administration turned the lights on at the school right at 8:20, or military time 20:20, to celebrate the Class of 2020.
The teachers lined up socially distant in masks with the music blaring to say goodbye.
“These seniors, especially at St. Johns, mean the world to us and our students mean the world to us and doing something like this tells them we love you and we miss you,” said teacher Kimberly Cadley.
So teachers lined the road through campus as the teens pulled through at a very important date and time: 20:20 on April 20, symbolic of the class that will always remember the year a worldwide pandemic ended a school year.
“We’re doing this because the Class of 2020 got a pretty raw deal in the whole thing and we wanted to remind them how special they are to us and how special. And put a little bit of fun into the last couple of months of their school year,” said Mary Virginia Fisher, Headmaster.
The idea was spawned by athletic directors nationwide and multiple schools are doing it in Florida.