Although the doors to the building are closed until May, Old Rochester Regional High School isn’t letting that stop it from honoring graduating seniors. This year, students and staff just have to be a little more creative. 

The high school has been encouraging seniors on social media to decorate the front doors of their homes as a way for the community to recognize the class that may not be able to participate in their usual end-of-year celebrations like graduation, senior assembly and prom.

“Nobody wants to be the forgotten class,” said Principal Michael Devoll. In his 11 years in the role, he has been able to honor every graduating class. He doesn’t plan on missing the chance to do it for this class either.

Devoll got the idea to post the prompt to the school’s Facebook page on March 30 after seeing a similar post by a friend who works at another school in Massachusetts.

Since then, there has been an outpouring of posts from the class of 175 seniors.

The front door decorations often feature the name of the student, a photo, where they’ll be attending college in the fall, and something that marks their time in high school.

Ballet slippers, jerseys, bulldog logos and messages of support from parents have all decorated various doors.

Lately, the school has made a push to post more on social media and engage its students. 

Devoll said that it’s hard to interact with 742 students that don’t come into the building, so posting more is a way to connect with students as he normally does in school.

Beyond the work he is doing, the ambassadOR club has been creating online content such as a music video and virtual events like spirit week online.

The school also enlisted the help of ORCTV to create a video of different teachers saying hello to their students and offering words of encouragement. 

The response across the board to what the school is doing on social media  has been positive, and Devoll said it’s nice to be able to bring smiles to the faces of community members at a time like this.

As principal, he wants seniors to be able to form a sense of pride from having graduated from ORR, so “no matter what the format, we’ll give them a proper send-off.”