Needham rains on parents attending graduation

"I know to a lot of parents I might be the bad guy right now, but parents forget the fact that they are not the only ones who wanted to see their kids graduate. There were 350 other kids with families; it would have just been far too dangerous to give them all their way."

Lynda Rudolph, co-president of the Pollard Middle School’s Parent Teacher Council and mother of an eighth-grader, said that she was "very disappointed with the way this was handled."

Rudolph said that there was no advance notice to parents that they might be locked out of their own children's graduation.

"If anything, I thought the class would be broken up into two separate indoor sessions making it possible for parents to attend," she said. "When Mr. Brand sent out an e-mail [Monday] I almost started to cry."

Rudolph said that part of her role on the Parent Teacher Council is to gauge how parents feel about the issues, and in this case, she said, "parents are feeling anything from neutral to outraged, but none of them are happy about this decision."

In the letter to parents, Brand said the school had "explored all possible alternatives" before deciding to hold the the ceremony in the auditorium without parents. "This space will safely accommodate all of our students and allow us to bring them together for one last time as a community," he wrote. "While we regret that this precludes you attending the event, we believe that it is important to prioritize bringing the class together for one last time."

To compensate, he said, the Needham Channel would film the event for parents to watch at their leisure.

But that was cold comfort for some parents.

"We live in new England, it has been raining for a month, they have had ample opportunity to come up with a plan B," said Jayme Yellin. "All the parents I spoke to said they would have been glad to pitch in and get a tent. Parents work hard, especially for this tough age group, and we want to see the fruits of our labor."

Another parent, Joanne Itzkowitz, agreed. "This is a milestone in a kid's life, and it's also a milestone in a parent's life," she said. "The children get dressed up in shirts and ties and heels and skirts and there’s nothing I would rather have than my own pictures of the event. The school took all that away from us with one note that they got out to the parents the night before."

But Elizabeth Handler, who has children in seventh and ninth grade at Pollard, sympathized with school administrators.

"As far as I can tell, the school was only thinking of putting children and their safety first," Handler said. "It's too bad the ceremony couldn't include everyone, but it's about the students -- not about the parents."

But the co-president of the Parent Teacher Council insists that graduation is a family affair.

"My daughter said to me last night, 'I don't know why we are even going through with this, the only reason to have this ceremony is for the parents,'" Rudolph said. "Our kids just want their parents to see them and be proud of them."