Students and parents in favor of the traditional graduation ceremony may have reason to rejoice after the Monday night's school board meeting.

Members of the Scotland County Board of Education unanimously favored holding a single ceremony for graduating seniors instead of five individual graduations.

The single ceremony was recommended by Superintendent Rick Stout who said most students and parents opposed the proposed change.

In a poll conducted among students on whether to hold one graduation for all Scotland students or to hold on for each of the five smaller learning communities, Scotland seniors overwhelmingly favored having one graduation, voting 271-28 to keeping the single ceremony.

Stout said that parents also favored the single ceremony.

Two factors were prominent in people's support of a single graduation, the superintendent said. First, parents were concerned their children wouldn't be able to see those they had known since kindergarten graduate, unless they attend multiple graduations. Second, it is tradition.

He also mentioned several issues with a single graduation the school system hopes to solve.

Parents took issue with noise as they could not hear their students names, and their were concerns raised over crowd control.

Stout also discussed a concern over the timing of graduation. Scotland high schoolers graduate several weeks before most North Carolina high schools as the their calendar is based on that of the community college system, a move that lets students at Scotland Early College High School graduate at the same time as regular students.

This difference in time means that playoff games in several high school sports could run concurrent to graduation.

Stout mentioned three possibilities. Either the students could have an 8:30 a.m. graduation on May 21, a Friday, an afternoon or night graduation on the 21, or a morning graduation on May 22, a Saturday. Only the first of these would avoid any of the games.

School officials made no decision on when to hold graduation at the meeting.

Also at the meeting:

• The board is considering securing a bond with a two percent interest rate from BB&T instead of waiting for the state to sell the zero interest bonds as a means of getting started with the Wagram expansion project. Stout believe the system could save money by doing this as contractors may raise their rates when school systems start receiving zero interest construction bonds.

• The school system's energy saving program reported $712,000 in cost savings and avoidance in utility bills over the past two years.

• Chairman Jimmy Bennett announced that the board would meet with the Scotland County Board of Commissioners on Jan. 25 at 7 p.m. in the Scotland County Commissioners chambers.

• Board members set a retreat for Feb. 25. A time and location had not yet been decided.

• End of Course testing results will be presented at the February school board meeting.

• The school system starts a Title II audit today.

• The school board recognized six teachers who recently gained National Board certifications. Those teachers were Katie Rohleder of Laurel Hill Elementary; Christina Snell of Spring Hill Middle School; Maggie McKeithan and Wendy Myers of Scotland Accelerated Academy; and Crystal Odom and Jo Ellen Weeks of Covington Street Elementary. There are currently 67 teachers with this distinction and the system expects to add 36 more next year.