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Principal’s Corner by Mark Grossklaus

 

For the Feb. 17 Albert Lea administrator column I wrote about how “Spring will arrive soon at Albert Lea High School.” In that column, I talked about all the exciting things coming to ALHS this spring. Two weeks later, the 2019-20 school year changed. We sent our students on spring break and not to return to the classrooms for the rest of the year.

We were just finishing up our winter sports season, except for our boys’ basketball team, which was scheduled to play Austin High School in the section finals to go to state. The rehearsal for the annual Tigers Roar was going full steam ahead. Our spring play, “Clueless,” was being rehearsed.

Students were preparing for spring sports if they were not involved with boys’ basketball, but unfortunately, our spring sports season got canceled. We had to cancel prom, but went virtual for senior awards night (bit.ly/ALHS2020_SeniorAwards), and we had to move graduation to July 24 instead of having it May 22.

This has been a challenging spring! Our students and staff have done a great job of transitioning with no experience in distance learning and making the best of a difficult situation. I am very proud of the students and staff for taking on this challenge.

To the class of 2020, you have been so mature through this whole situation. All of these events listed above were your final events at Albert Lea High School. Students and parents have been very understanding as we had to cancel the different events due to the COVID-19. Thank you!

On July 24 the class of 2020 will graduate from Albert Lea High School. Many of the details will be coming out in the next few weeks. As a number of seniors presented their speeches for graduation the other day, they reminded us the class of 2020 was born right after 9/11, and now, the COVID-19. All the senior speeches presented talked about the strength and resilience of the class of 2020 to overcome the disappointments at the end of the senior year, but they all talked about how they prevailed through this, it will make them stronger, how they will always have something to talk about at all of their class reunions. The class of 2020, we are proud of you and look forward to your graduation on July 24!

Thank you to our students, parents, support staff and teachers to finish the fourth quarter off!  Updates on events about Albert Lea High School can be found on our website at www.alschools.org/our-schools/albert-lea-high-school.

Mark Grossklaus is the principal at Albert Lea High School.