This podcast episode delves into the intricacies of orchestrating a memorable graduation day for students and their families. We explore the meticulous planning that occurs behind the scenes, from ticket allocations and parking logistics to ensuring a seamless ceremony experience. Our esteemed guests, Kendall Aronson and Kyle Giesler from the Events Department, provide invaluable insights into the various elements that contribute to the success of graduation. We address common concerns such as ticketing procedures, accessibility for guests with mobility challenges, and the attire expectations for graduates. Ultimately, our discussion seeks to equip families with essential knowledge that will enhance their celebration and mitigate potential last-minute surprises.

Guests:

Kyle Giesler, Events and Meetings Manager, Events Department

Kendall Aronson, Events and Projects Manager, Events Department

Useful links from the podcast:

• Walton Senior/Graduation Information
• Sprayberry Graduation Ticket Request & Allocation
• South Cobb Senior/Graduation Information
• Pope Senior Information
• Pebblebrook Graduation Information (Class of 2026)
• North Cobb Seniors: Class of 2026
• McEachern Senior Information
• Lassiter Senior/Graduation Information
• Kennesaw Mountain - Class of 2026 Commencement Ceremony
• Kell Class of 2026 Graduation Information
• Harrison Senior Information - Class of 2026
• Cobb Online Learning Academy 2026 Graduation Information
• Cobb Horizon Graduation Ceremony Information
• Campbell Senior Class Information
• Allatoona Seniors (Class of 2026) Resource Page
• Graduation/Commencement Info

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https://www.cobbk12.org

Takeaways:

1. Graduation Day represents a culmination of student success, with nearly 9,000 graduates celebrated annually.
2. The Events Services department meticulously organizes graduation ceremonies from September through May each academic year.
3. Guests with mobility issues receive priority entrance to the ceremony one hour prior to its commencement.
4. Clear bag policies dictate the items permitted inside the convocation center during graduation events.
5. Parking for graduation is subject to high demand, especially with concurrent events, necessitating early arrival.
6. Graduates will receive a diploma cover on stage, while actual diplomas are distributed by schools afterwards.

How you can make your students graduation day the best it can be. This week on the Inside Scoop. Hello and welcome back to the Inside Scoop. I'm David Owen.

In this episode, we'll learn a little bit about the behind the scenes work that keeps everything working smoothly. All about the tickets, parking and how to avoid last minute surprises to make celebration day as most enjoyable.

But first, please like subscribe and share this podcast with a friend and subscribe to help others as well.

Joining me today to discuss making the celebration a smooth day for you and your family are events and projects manager Kendall Aronson and events and meetings manager Kyle Giesler. Hi, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you. Appreciate you having us.

I failed to mention you're both of the Events Services department.

Yes.

Right. Okay. So we're here to talk about the big show for you guys, right? That's Graduation Day. What do you guys do relating to graduation?

I think a lot of people think that we rent out the KSU Convo center and they do everything for us, but that's not reality, is it? Tell us a little bit about how events makes graduation happen, if you don't mind.

So pretty much from September till May, we are working on commencements. We're present at all 17 ceremonies

and not all ceremony. I'm sorry to interrupt, but not all ceremonies are at ksu.

They are this year.

Oh, they are?

Yes. Okay, so Alatun and McEachern will be at KSU this year for the first time.

Wow.

Okay, we got all 17 there.

Yeah. That's kind of a victory for you guys. Right? Okay. And so we see content going on the big screen. Right, and you guys do that as well?

Yes, we do. All of the audio mixing. All of the stuff on screen is filmed largely by our student staff from Harrison High School.

And the lighting, the audio, the stream on the website is also done by our students.

Very cool.

We set up the stage and all of the furniture in the space. We do a lot to make it happen.

Okay, so that is, as you said, 17. You do this 17 times in a row at the end of the school year, which in itself should receive some form of award for endurance, I think.

And about how many students do we graduate each year?

So we have about right under 9,000 graduates total across all of them. Yeah.

That is insane. I mean, that's great because I mean, that represents students crossing that finish line. That is student success in many regards.

Right, Right, yes, absolutely.

So probably the number one question on the mind of our viewers is what about tickets that's kind of the big nugget of information I think everybody's wondering about.

Well, and that tickets, they can vary year to year. And there's so many factors that go into it. You know, we're limited on seating because it's a venue. And so we've got a certain number of seats.

We'd love to have a, you know, a 70,000 seat arena to be able to put everybody in there. But we have to look at the size of the graduating class because they have to sit somewhere. So they factor in how many seats are available.

Once we, you know, take all them out of the equation, then we have a certain number of seats left. So a smaller school is going to have more seats available and then a larger school is going to have fewer seats available.

But we basically, we ask the students back in the fall and in January to give us feedback on how many tickets they'd like to request.

And then our system goes through and says, okay, for this school, we've got this many available guest tickets and it will go through and say, okay, everyone who has requested one ticket, we'll give them one ticket. If you've requested two tickets. And it will continue to go through until it can't fulfill a set of tickets.

So that might be at four tickets, it might be at five. So it just. The system will then stop.

I'm sorry again, I wouldn't expect you'd get many one ticket requests, do you?

There might be a few. It's usually two or more. And that's where it could factor in. You could have a lot of families request a lot of tickets.

You could have, in some situations, a lot of families request fewer tickets. So there's just so many variables that go into it.

And when you're saying a ticket, what if one of your parents is a school district employee? Does that matter?

No. We respect our school district employees, but everyone who walks through that door has to have a ticket because ticket babies too.

Every ticket means a seat. And people will ask, why babies? They can sit in my lap. But you usually come in with stuff with a baby, you come in with a carrier or bags.

And it's very easy to put that in the seat next to you.

So instead of trying to police the empty seats and people putting stuff in the seats, we just say basically every human being that walks through that door or comes through that door has to have a ticket.

And seats are only for humans, not for items.

Right.

Okay. And so when are tickets available?

So within a month. So usually around the April. April 1st is our goal, to allocate those tickets.

So that's when we're going to hit the button and say, okay, system, do your thing and distribute the tickets. And what the students will see, the graduates will see in their portal is how many tickets they got. And that announcement will come from the school.

The school will let the students and the families know, okay, the allocation's done. You can log on to the portal to see how many you got.

Okay, is there an electronic ticket or is it a physical ticket?

No, it's actually a physical ticket. And we hang on to those. We give them to the schools, but we hang on to them to the last minute only because that just limits the potential for loss.

You've got to have a physical ticket to get through the door.

And so those are distributed to the students at their last graduation practice, which is typically a day or two before their ceremony, unless there's a weekend involved there. So they get the physical tickets and that's how you get through the door. So photocopies, pictures, those aren't going to get you in.

You need to have that physical ticket.

And there aren't scalpers on the front sidewalk, I wouldn't imagine.

We don't allow scalpers to sell them. We hope that's not happening. Things we can't see.

Well, actually, that's a question. I mean, can people, like, if they find out, oh, I don't need four, I only need two. Can they turn around and sell their tickets to somebody else?

I mean, we're not policing that. But here's what I would say.

I would say give them back to the school because the school does have some extra tickets, because that system, if it can't run through and give that next round of tickets, we give those extra tickets to the school and they distribute them. They come up with their own system. It might be a lottery, it might be a drawing.

It might be something we would encourage you give it back to the school. Because some of the prices out there that we've heard are ridiculous.

Well, and it's just not human to do that.

I mean, parents, in some cases parents have kids who have struggled and scraped and now they're at their big day and then you're holding them hostage for a few bucks. Come on. You get tickets for free.

Yeah. So, yeah, we don't charge for the tickets.

But yes, we definitely would encourage them, get back those extra tickets and let the school get them in the hands of somebody who really needs them.

Okay, and any additional questions about tickets? Where do they go?

They go to the they need to talk to their school.

Not your personal cell phone.

Not my personal cell phone. They need to talk to the school only because the school's going to understand. Here's when we're giving them out. Here's the exact date.

The school's going to be able to explain if there's extra tickets. We don't. The events office just helps facilitate getting it to them, but the school handles all the distribution.

Okay, so let's switch gears a little bit and talk specifically about graduation day itself. Now, when do the doors open?

I mean, I know you've got different times for the various graduations, but generally relative to the graduation time, when do the doors open?

So our graduates need to be there 90 minutes before the ceremony.

Okay.

So they're actually going to line up in the building next door, the Siegel center, and the school's going to handle getting them lined up so they can come in.

You know, there are some guests who are, you know, just fine and dandy walking in, but some guests take a little longer, grandparents especially, or maybe somebody in a wheelchair. When the doors open, do they get an advance entry time or anything? How does that.

So we open up the doors for our guests needing assistance one hour before the ceremony.

Okay, good.

And we limit it to individuals that have mobility issues. They, you know, for whatever reason, it's going to be a little bit harder for them to get to where they need to be.

So we're prepared for them an hour ahead of time. And then doors for everyone else opens 45 minutes ahead.

So there's a 15 minute window there for a guest needing assistance, you know, if they're in a wheelchair.

We do have identified seating locations on the main level for them, ADA compliant locations, but we only allow one guest with them, one ticketed guest to sit with them there. Okay. That allows us to have more space for guests that need, need to be there.

So what are the guidelines for what guests can and cannot bring into the convo center? I know there are possibly KSU restrictions in that regard.

Is there something, anything you can enlighten us with that'll keep people from being surprised on the day of and have to go back to the car and put whatever it is in the car and not bring it in.

Strollers, they take up space. Yeah, so we don't allow strollers inside. So those need to stay at the car. Other items, it's kind of like going to a sporting event today.

You know, it's clear bag policy. So clear bags, they do allow small clutch purses, but it's the small, and there's some measurements there that. That are published.

But for the most part, if you're bringing in a bag, it needs to be clear. So even.

Even if it's a baby and you're bringing in diapers and formula and all that, they're not the most attractive diaper bags, but they need to be in a clear bag. So you might just need to move everything over to that bag. Some other things, tripods, monopods.

You know, you might have been a parent who videoed everything your child was in. Well, you can bring the camera, but you need to leave the other equipment at home because it takes up space.

Now, one thing about the for the babies bottles, you can bring in a baby bottle that's already filled, but if you're bringing in a drinking water bottle, it needs to be empty. They have bottle filling stations in ksu, but they don't allow even sealed, unopened water bottles that you might hear about in other places.

Those are not allowed. So you have to bring in an empty bottle and you can fill it in.

So you could, if need be, step over to the plant outside the venue and water the plant for a minute and then go in.

And there's a lot of other items on the list that gets published by the schools. There's a whole document that month that kind of outlines everything for the spring for seniors.

And they talk all about what's prohibited and what you can't do.

They get into the specifics on that.

But those are the big ones. Those are the surprises.

That one big thing that those of us who tend to be the ones driving the family parking. You know, that to me, that's one of the biggest stress points whenever I go to an event of any sort, frankly.

Tell us about the parking situation there. I've been there, and it's, you know, orange cones everywhere, cops everywhere to direct traffic.

Tell us about the situation and help us prepare for that.

Yeah. So you should definitely expect. Yeah, a lot of cones, a lot of police presence.

But general admission, guests should park in the east parking deck and the surface lot right outside of that. Those are the closest two parking areas to the convocation lot. We do also have accessible parking parking available in lot B.

It's a little bit further, but we have golf carts that take everyone from that lot to the front door.

Okay.

In addition, the students can park in the central parking deck if they're not driving with their family, which is also common, and that's fine. You should expect to pay $10 per car. That's not something we can control. That's a KSU thing and that money goes to KSU. But.

But it is $10 per car and that has to be paid with credit card. This year specifically. There is also a baseball tournament that has been scheduled at ksu.

Are you kidding me?

So yeah, Conference USA is having a baseball tournament. They have different parking, but it is a lot of the same times as our commencement ceremonies.

So people are going to be competing for parking spaces at KSU in some.

So we have our own parking decks. It's just going to be a. You should definitely prepare for more traffic than normal. Yeah. When you're attending the ceremony.

So definitely try to get there early if you can.

But yeah, they have their own parking lots that have been designated and we'll have more signage and more flags than we've had in previous years to try to compensate and make sure everyone's informed on where specifically we should be parking.

What do the parents and families need to know about their attire? The student's attire underneath the cap and gown, I guess is just.

Why don't you go into all that detail because that can actually get to be more squirrely than people realize. Right.

You know, graduation is. It's a dignified, informal ceremony. And so across all 17 schools, there's an expected attire of the cap and gown.

It's been designed by the school and put out there for the students to purchase. And that's a non negotiable. They have to wear that. With that. Some students have earned stoles and cords. We actually did some research last year.

There's over 100 different cords across our 17 schools. Some of them are unique to individual schools. But what we tell our graduates is whatever you wear has to be school approved.

So we're not adding to it. We're not decorating the caps and the mortarboard on the top. It's because we want to honor the dignity of this. It's a special moment.

You referenced student success. This is the pinnacle of student success for this school district is watching 9,000 students walk across that stage.

We don't want to detract from that. And so the expectation is that cap and gown, the cords, the stoles, the pins, whatever they're wearing must be school approved.

Now in terms of what they wear under that, we also want to make sure that our students and our graduates understand that school district dress code still applies. And for graduates, there's some little bit more specifics. Like for the young men, they're expected to wear pants, not shorts.

They're Expected to wear pants, no flip flops, no sandals. And it's keeping with the idea of this. It's a dignified event for the ladies.

They can wear dresses under there, but we highly encourage our ladies if they don't have a lot of experience in wearing heels. There's a lot of walking between the lineup area, the parking decks, and getting to the convocation center.

And steps along the way as well.

Yeah, and steps getting up and down. So we encourage. We don't require. We encourage some flats just to make that traversing the different locations a little bit easier.

So once the ceremony begins, and, you know, a very dignified proceeding, I guess you'd call it, is going on, I've always wondered this. What do they actually receive on stage? Because you've got this massive stack of what looks like diplomas.

Are they actually their diplomas or how does that all work?

Yeah, so it's their diploma cover. There's no diploma inside that they receive on stage. That is. So we don't accidentally give someone the wrong diploma on stage.

That makes sense.

But yeah. So students can expect to get their diplomas from their local high schools after the event, and that time is set by each specific school.

And it may be slightly earlier for some schools that have a ceremony earlier in the week, but that time will be given up by the local schools.

So earlier we were talking about, like, elderly, like, grandparents and so forth getting in. But what if they're out of state? Yeah. You guys do a live stream, right? How does that all work? How can they take advantage of that?

Yeah, so it's available live during every single ceremony. If they go to the main Cobb county website during that week, it'll be able to be accessed pretty easily alongside all of the other information.

If they are going in person, they can have maps and another breakdown of all of those different parking spots per group.

Additionally, at the ceremony, if you have a student who's speaking or you want a copy forever of your student's graduation, we sell DVDs and USBs of the ceremony, both at the ceremony physically, and then also online.

Okay. All right.

Yeah.

And so on that webpage, our school district webpage, we have a breakdown of all the information about commencement, talk about those prohibited items, the. The videos, just about anything you want to know. Every school has their own webpage dedicated to their specific commencement.

So they get into all the specific information about all the activities for their seniors. It's not just limited to the commencement ceremony. There may be a senior movie night or something like that. A parade or something that they're doing.

So I highly encourage parents to check out both the Cobb county webpage and go to their school specific webpage.

And I would also mention that in the arena itself, if there are situations that come up and you need assistance, reach out to one of the school staff members. They're going to be scattered all around the arena. So I would encourage them to reach out to them.

And it could be something very simple, but it also could be something very serious. Maybe there's a medical emergency, maybe there's a lost child. We've got police officers around.

We want to be sure that we're making this event, you know, as comfortable. But also if there's something that somebody needs help, we want to make sure we get them the help they need. Absolutely.

Well, guys, thank you so much for coming by and offering this information. I know as a parent of a graduating senior, first of all, your mind and emotion are all over the place.

So these guys are a great resource to be able to kind of corral all of that.

And we're going to make sure that those web page addresses, I don't know about the individual school addresses, but we'll make sure as much of that information is available on our podcast Show Notes, as well as in the description. There have been several insights offered today, and frankly, just trying to remember them all is maybe a little challenging.

So if you've heard something helpful to you and your family, please remember, like subscribe and share this podcast with a friend. They'd probably like to have these same insights as well.

Thank you for listening to this edition of the Inside Scoop, a podcast produced by the Cobb County School.