Foothill High seniors stand together (but six feet apart)

With it being less and less likely that this year’s class of seniors at Foothill High School will have a traditional commencement ceremony due to the coronavirus pandemic, staff and teachers came together — in spirit, any way — to publicly celebrate the students and their success by personally delivering congratulatory lawn signs to all 547 members of the graduating class last Thursday.

A giant blue letter “F” outlined in gold — the school’s colors — and the proclamation “Class of 2020 Grad Lives Here” take up most of the space on the signs, which also show the blue silhouette of a crowd wearing flat-brimmed graduation caps against a white background, with the words “We Stand (Six Feet Apart) Together” at the bottom.

“There’s nothing we want more than to be able to have this all go away and have a normal graduation celebration, but of course we can’t. So we have to find alternative ways to celebrate the seniors,” Foothill principal Sebastian Bull told the Weekly. “This way seems to not be the greatest thing ever but it’s a small thing we can do to celebrate them before they go off on the next paths of their lives.”

Bull said the Foothill Athletic Boosters “helped us get the ball rolling” on the idea several weeks ago and had the signs delivered to FAB president Derek Perez’s house. After that, Shawna Lombardi, chair of the Senior Parents Committee, and other members reached out to school staff and coordinated delivery of the signs during a two-hour window on April 23.

Lombardi said that Bull had the unenviable task of figuring out which neighborhoods students lived in and assigning deliveries to about 50 volunteers.

“We had to get the list of our seniors and their addresses, so I had to lean on our district office for help because they run reports that I can’t,” Bull said, including generating codes that indicate the neighborhoods that students live in, breaking those into groups of students and then creating maps for drivers.

Volunteers delivered the signs in a variety of ways — some roused the block by honking their horns or blasting music on the radio, while others chose a stealth doorbell ditch.

Tracy Whelan and her daughter Zoe, a senior at Foothill, were hanging out at home last week when they received a (somewhat) surprise visit.

“We heard something was coming but we didn’t know what it was. We had the windows open, waiting and watching, and all of a sudden we saw this couple get out of this truck — one was a Foothill teacher and her husband,” Tracy Whelan said. “They put the lawn sign on the front, we went out — we didn’t get close but we thanked them. It was a nice, cheery thing to have happen with everything else going on.”

“I think she was more excited to see the teachers because that was kind of a fun surprise for her,” she said, adding that seeing her daughter’s friends and classmates also posing with their signs on social media added to the sense of community.

“It means a lot that the parents and teachers care enough about our senior year memories to put in effort during this unprecedented time,” Zoe Whelan said. “I loved seeing the teachers and signs around the community, and I know it was no small thing to do.”

Zoe’s mom has been realistic about the odds of Foothill’s class of 2020 having a live graduation, but Tracy said, “I think there’s great appreciation from my friends that I talk with for the effort that people are going through to try to create moments for these poor seniors. They really deserve a lot of praise and applause for the effort they put forth to lift people’s spirits, and the seniors’ spirits.”