Moving the start time for Allen seniors’ graduation ceremony this year was discussed Monday at the regular meeting of the Allen Board of Education.

The start time of the graduation ceremony will be moved ahead from 10 a.m. to 9 a.m. Saturday, May 10, Superintendent Jeff Hiatt confirmed Tuesday.

During Monday’s meeting, Hiatt said a senior student has the second fastest time in the 100-meter dash in the state and should qualify for state finals in the event, and for that student to make it to the event on time, graduation would need to be moved back or changed to a different date.

“I had a meeting with the senior class, Mr. Butcher was sick last week, all week, so Mr.

Vaughn and I met with them and just kind of threw everything on the table, ‘Here’s what we got,’” Hiatt said. “What do y’all think we should do?”

Hiatt said he was looking at changing the date of the ceremony, but a student asked about moving graduation ahead one hour. Hiatt agreed that that may be the best solution.

Hiatt said he asked the students to have their parents contact him.

“So, I did have some emails and some phone calls, and I thanked them for calling me and told them I appreciated their input,” Hiatt said. “I just told them, what I’m trying to do is allow, we’ve got 31 seniors, to allow kids to not have to make a choice. I don’t think a kid should have to pick graduation or skip their state track meet. I think that they should get to do both. If there’s no way to do it on Sunday, I think we would have to move graduation (ahead one hour), to be fair. I take all blame for that, I had people mad, saying we should have caught this, but the fact is I didn’t catch it. But it’s caught now, and I can’t go back ... and fix it, I can only deal with the facts in front of me and I want to do what’s best for the kids. And when you talk to the kids, the kids are fine. The kids are like, ‘Yeah, I want him or her to do their event,’ so I really think the kids are fine.”

Action Items

In action items, Calem Woodward was sworn in as a new board member to seat number 5 after defeating incumbent Ron Batey 86-84 earlier in April. A s part of the annual reorganization of the board, Frankie Bell remained President, Mike Todd remained Vice President, and Mario Gonzalez was selected as Board Clerk.

The board approved adding the president and clerk to the signature card at Farmers State Bank.

Also in action items, the board approved a resolution determining the maturities of, and setting a date, time and place for the sale of the $530,000 General Obligation Transportation Equipment Bonds of the School District. The time was set for 1 p.m. on May 22nd.

The board also approved an out-of-state Senior Class Trip to “Active” in Plano, Texas, on May 5th, for the Class of 2025.

Administrative Reports

During administrative reports, Hiatt spoke to the board about how the school system is currently upgrading the fiberoptic cables for the schools’ internet. He said the current underground fiberoptics is one gigabyte, which, Hiatt indicated, is slow and