Parents take prom into their own hands

It wasn’t a question of if prom was going to happen in Sioux Falls this year. It was a question of how.

The class of 2020 missed out on the chance to attend the quintessential high school dance when the coronavirus pandemic hit. A year later, with cases dropping and vaccines on the rise, a group of determined parents are making sure the class of 2021 doesn’t fall to the same fate.

So this year, they’re taking prom into their own hands.

All three of the public high schools in Sioux Falls have parents planning private events at various venues across town after the April 24 school-sanctioned grand marches.

“If there is a way to keep them safe at school and in class, there is a way to do prom safely,” said parent Heather Taylor, who’s one of four parents planning the Lincoln High School prom.

A website advertises Lincoln High School’s prom with the theme “Underground Prom.”

Sioux Falls School District officials announced earlier this year that they weren’t going to host school-sanctioned proms again this spring.

Instead, they’d host grand marches, in which students could show off their prom attire, provide a photo opportunity for parents and then, well, they’re not the school’s problem anymore.

“We understand some parents and guardians are planning nonschool events after the grand march,” said district spokesperson DeeAnn Konrad. “We wish students and their families well and encourage everyone to be safe.”

Instead of letting their kids get dressed up with nowhere to go, Washington parents rented the Sioux Falls Convention Center.

Roosevelt’s parent-run prom booked the nearby South Dakota Military Heritage Alliance, formerly Badlands Pawn, and Lincoln High School parents rented The Social, the new event space in the former Pocket pool hall off of East 10th Street.

Parents say they never intended to go behind the district’s back. In fact, some have even consulted with district officials to get advice on typical school dance protocol.

“There doesn’t seem to be tension,” said Amber Luecke, a parent on the Washington High School prom committee.

Luecke said the district understands why parents want to do this for their kids. And parents say they understand why the district doesn’t want to host it themselves.

“We’ve taken on a lot of liability in doing this,” Luecke said. “But this is an amazing senior class, and these kids … they just deserve to have a night to feel really special.”

To make sure that happens, each of the parent-hosted proms has a strict set of rules.

Like any prom, there’s the usual set of no-drinking rules. But there are also temperature checks, hand sanitizer stations and masks.

Keeping kids healthy is especially important because the annual Advanced Placement tests, scores of which can impact college coursework or allow students to skip entry-level classes, take place the week after prom.

“We want to make sure it doesn’t become some sort of superspreader event,” Taylor said.

Strict mask rules are also important to parents because they’ve seen what it can look like when masks aren’t worn.

Photos of a recent Roosevelt High School dance at The District that was organized by parents surfaced and were later removed from social media. In them, hundreds of students were packed tightly together with no masks in sight — at least, none that were being worn.

That event “didn’t go well in terms of masks,” Luecke said, adding that parents will do everything they can to make sure masks and safety precautions are enforced at prom, but noting that students need to do their part too.

School district officials declined to comment on the earlier unsanctioned Roosevelt dance.

And while the masks might be part of the attire, the rest of the ensemble is starting to drive business at local retailers.