Benefield: Grateful for all that Project Graduation offers at Sonoma County schools? Volunteer, please

For decades, parents and community leaders have spent entire school years prepping for one night, which, for high school seniors is the party of their lives.

It’s called Project Graduation. For decades, these grand parties, which last from grad night to early the next morning, transform gymnasiums into casino halls and dance clubs, and outdoor quads into beach volleyball courts and carnivals. The goal is to keep kids safe, and they have.

Since Project Graduation began here in 1987, no senior has died on graduation night in Sonoma County.

It’s a safety record that reflects the sheer will of parents over the years to protect kids from a night that, statistically, is one of the most dangerous in their young lives.

But the rock solid foundation, built over time and firmed up by tradition, is showing cracks.

Two years of COVID-related cancellations has created a whole segment of students and parents who are unfamiliar with the event itself or the work it takes to pull it off.

Out there hustling and cajoling, negotiating and grinding are the handful of volunteers who lead the rest. The event presidents and leaders raise funds, collect prizes, secure vendors and, most crucially, recruit volunteers to staff a party that can take days to set up and scores of people to run from dusk to dawn on the big night.

It’s those people, the volunteers who agree to run the blackjack table for the 11 p.m. to 2 a.m. shift, or work the carnival from 10 p.m. to 1 a.m. or serve food 8 p.m. to midnight, that many schools are lacking with just days to go until their events.

“Ninety percent of them are panicking because of not having enough volunteers,” said Janice Brown, a stalwart volunteer who has led the countywide Sonoma County Safe and Sober Project Graduation program for 19 years and has been active in Rancho Cotate’s Project Grad party for 23 years.

“Most parties take about 200 volunteers for the night and all year long they are normally working on it,” she said.

But these last two years have been nothing close to normal.

Project Grad parties were abruptly canceled in 2020. A few schools put together modified events in 2021, but most schools did nothing.

This year, volunteer leaders are battling inertia, health worries, fatigue and people feeling unfamiliar with this magical event.

Vendors and businesses have come up big with donations for prizes and in-kind services for parties that can cost as much as $30,000 to put on, leaders said, but it’s the boots on the ground help that’s really needed.

“Some schools, their committees just fell apart and presidents have held it together,” Brown said.

This year will be crucial for the future of Project Graduation, Brown said.

“This year will kind of be a test year, to see … if it can come back or not,” she said. “If parents don’t step up, it will die out.”

‘I’m going to figure it out’

Not on my watch, said Petaluma High’s Project Grad president Rita Schaefer.

Petaluma and Casa Grande typically share a venue on successive nights to save costs on rentals and DJs, but the Petaluma Community Center was booked this year.

So Schaefer locked in the old Kmart site on North McDowell Boulevard.

“We have to do something with the ‘Blue Light Special,’” she joked.

But the Kmart site doesn’t have tables and chairs included, like the community center did. Schaefer is undeterred.

“There are challenges. I’m not worried about it. I’m going to figure it out,” she said.

It’s that drive that shows through in conversations with other Project Grad leaders. They believe so deeply in the value of this night, in keeping kids off the streets, they are working themselves silly.

‘How do we drum this up?’

The tradition of “paying it forward,” in which underclassmen parents are responsible for volunteer shifts at the party so seniors don’t bump into mom, are over. At least this year.

“I’m a senior parent, I’m the president and I told my son, I’m sorry, but I’m going to be there all night,” said Shannyn Vehmeyer, president of Windsor High’s Project Graduation.

The vice president is a senior mom, so are the carnival leaders. But they will all be there.

And Vehmeyer has already sounded the alarm that she and other leaders are ready to pass the baton.

“I said to principal Brian (Williams), OK, how do we drum this up and how do we get the word out and keep this going?” she said.

Tiffany Cazares, president of Project Graduation for Rancho Cotate, Credo, Tech and El Camino high schools, hasn’t had a kid in school since 2020.

“My son didn’t get a Project Graduation,” she said.

But she knows what it means to kids. Her daughter graduated and went to the party in 2018. So Cazares sticks with it, even in the face of struggles.

“With nonprofits … there has always been a little bit of a struggle, you have a few people who are always the go-to people doing everything,” she said. “With COVID, we can’t even get that.”

“I have never had this hard of a time getting these spots filled,” she said.

At Maria Carrillo High, the committee is renting Epicenter for the night in part because vastly fewer volunteers are needed for set up, chaperoning and cleanup.

“It’s less volunteer-intensive,” president Katie Ruppe said. “We are having a hard time finding them.”

“And it’s not specific to this. We are having a hard time finding volunteers for everything, the Parents Club, the athletic association. It’s not unique to Project Grad,” she said.

That said, many (exhausted) Project Grad leaders said they feel fortunate that they get to throw (finally) a party for the class of 2022 and that they have been able to scrape together enough volunteers to pull it off.

Because not all schools are so fortunate.

Tomales High made the call back in January not to hold the party this year. Rising COVID numbers and uncertainty about volunteers all made it untenable for their small group, president Toni Azevedo said.

“I feel for the kids, I truly do. I’d love to give them a party,” she said of the approximately 35 graduates in the class of ‘22.

But Azevedo won’t let it die, despite three years of no party.

“I’m president but I don’t even have kids at the school anymore. But I don’t want it to fall apart,” she said. “I won’t let it go away.”

That’s the same tone other Project Grad leaders sound. They are hoping that this year’s party will be an uplifting reminder of all that Project Grad can mean to students and families.

And it’s also to make up for so much lost these last two years.

“Senior parents are saying, ‘I want to make sure there is something for my kid this year,’” Rancho’s Cazares said.

So that brings us to the elephant in the room: spiking COVID numbers in Sonoma County.

Is it a great idea to invite scores of kids into gymnasiums to eat, drink, hug and talk all night long? Is it safe for volunteers?

I asked Dr. Kismet Baldwin, county deputy health officer.

“Yes, our case rates have gone up considerably over the last month and that means there is quite a bit of transmission in the community of COVID,” she said.

“But we are in a setting now where there is not a lot of orders and mandates in place which is probably making people a little bit nervous, they aren’t sure what to do,” she said.

That said, it’s the county’s recommendation to mask up.

“With this level of transmission in the community, we are strongly recommending wearing a mask, especially if the ceremony is indoors or any gathering is happening indoors,” she said.

Serving food and drink? Maybe do that outside, so the lowering of masks isn’t happening indoors, she said.

And it’s not a bad idea to test before you go, she said.

You can help the last hurrah

But let’s not let Project Graduation fall victim to the pandemic. Let’s not have a collective forgetting of how much fun this party is for seniors.

And let’s not forget how safe they have stayed, at least on this one night, because of it.

Project Graduation is a balm for worried parents, but it’s also a blast for seniors on the cusp of leaving high school behind.

It’s a last hurrah before they fly off.

And like many Project Grad leaders said, it may be the biggest party some of these kids will ever attend and it will be all about them.

Don’t let it die. Sign up to support. Sign up to help. Sign up to keep the party going.

You can reach Staff Columnist Kerry Benefield at 707-526-8671 or kerry.benefield@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @benefield.