The Panther Valley Class of 2020 will gather one more time to celebrate their graduation.

In the process, they will become the first graduates in a decade to graduate outdoors at the school’s stadium in Lansford.

The school district has finalized plans to hold graduation at 6 p.m. June 19. A limited number of family members will be in attendance in order to maintain social distancing. The rain date is June 20.

“We’re doing a graduation and it’s fantastic we’re going to do it at the stadium. We were going to do virtual, but we wanted to do a little bit more,” said Renee DeMelfi, who heads the Panther Valley school board’s graduation committee.

With Carbon County moving into the green phase June 12, gatherings up to 250 people are permitted. The district decided to move up plans for an in-person graduation, which they originally planned for July.

In order to comply with the state’s limit on gatherings, family members will be split into two separate audiences. Relatives of the first 40-plus graduates will be in the stands when they receive their diplomas. Then those family members will be dismissed, and relatives of the other 40-plus graduates will take their seats in the stands.

DeMelfi said that unique arrangement is essential if they want to hold a ceremony with all the graduates on the field together.

“There’s so many family members who wanted to see a big graduation with the kids together - I really feel they’re going to do what they need to do in order to have a successful graduation,” she said.

The stadium provides the space needed to comply with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines for social distancing. It also will give the Class of 2020 the chance to be the first Panther Valley graduates since 2010 to have an outdoor ceremony.

“We always have an awesome graduation - it’s very traditional and everyone loves it. But I think this is really awesome. It hasn’t been done for 10 years,” he said.

Each student will be given three tickets for family members to attend the ceremony. That is the same number that graduates received in past years when the ceremony was held indoors.

Students will pick up their diplomas rather than receiving them from the principal like past ceremonies. By moving up graduation, graduates who have enlisted in the military will be able to graduate alongside their classmates.

When the school originally planned for graduation, Carbon County was still in the red phase. A virtual graduation was planned. But parents and students made it known that they preferred some kind of in-person ceremony.

When the governor quickly moved the county from red to yellow, and now green, an in-person ceremony was back in play.

“We just wanted to do as much as we possibly could. That’s what the senior advisers wanted to do as well - at that time we were in the red,” DeMelfi said.