With the announcement on Friday that schools would remain physically closed until at least September, the prospect of graduation ceremonies was thrown into limbo as people suddenly asked what a COVID-19 grad would even look like, and if it could even happen at all.

Kyle McIntyre is the director of education for the Chinook School Division.

He says that in a normal year, much of the graduation planning is left up to the individual schools.

"Typically every community and every school has their tradition and although there are elements that are similar in every single school there are lots of things that are very specific to a community."

How those traditions and how those ceremonies might change in a COVID-19 world is something that he doesn't know the specifics of. But he does know that if graduation ceremonies take place at all, they will have to look much different than they currently do.

"Although we try to respect graduation dates and traditions, we know that first and foremost we have to follow all the orders from the province and the chief medical health officer around the social distancing and around the gatherings. So graduations have to look a lot different than they have in the past."

In that respect, the first and possibly largest change is simply in how much of a role the division plays in graduation ceremonies themselves.

As already mentioned above, traditionally the planning was left largely to the individual schools, and by extension, the students to plan their high school ceremonies.

In the new COVID-19 reality, however, McIntyre concedes that more direct oversight from the school division would be prudent.

"We're not prescriptive about how grad ceremonies should look at the school level. But in this circumstance, we want to have some division and some board oversight because we want to ensure that whatever celebrations are being planned or contemplated by communities that the chief medical health officer orders are being followed."

Further complicating the very notion of a traditional graduation ceremony is the simple fact that under the current provincial education guidelines that were handed down by the government, students could opt out of in-home learning entirely; choosing to take a nominally passing grade rather than working to improve it.

In McIntyre's estimation, a number of students have already moved on; choosing instead to take their passing grade and enter the workforce early.

Whether those students would choose to return, or even care, about a graduation ceremony in whatever form it took is a question that remains up-in-the-air.

Swift Current Online will follow the updates as more information on possible grad ceremonies becomes available in the coming weeks.

Potentially, across the Chinook School Division, up to 487 students would be eligible to graduate in 2020.