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During the July Troup County School Board work session, the school system discussed plans to make changes to graduation ceremonies after altercations occurred in the stands at Callaway Stadium during commencement.

After the incidents, the high school principals and others involved in graduation began to discuss potential changes to mitigate similar incidents in the future and increase security at the stadium.

Several ideas were proposed from going to a limited ticketing process for attendees to moving graduation times.

Secondary Education Director Amy Thornton outlined some of the solutions that were settled on for upcoming graduations.

The first change would move the start times for Callaway and Troup High’s graduation from 8 p.m. to 6:30 p.m., which would have the ceremony ending before dark. LaGrange’s graduation would be unchanged as they traditionally hold commencement on Saturday morning.

In the past, Troup and Callaway have started their graduations so late in the evening in an attempt to mitigate the summer heat.

“We talked a little bit about heat but it’s just hot,” Thornton said. “It is just hot all day. It doesn’t matter if it’s  6:30 or 8 p.m. It doesn’t get that much cooler.”

“Starting a ceremony at 8 p.m. at night and expecting it to go well with open access is a little much,” she said.

Thornton said moving all of the graduations to the morning was not seriously considered because Troup and Callaway’s graduations are held on a school day.

The other change is the schools want to move toward issuing 10 tickets per graduate for the ceremony rather than the current open access.

“We understand there will be exceptions to the ticket rule because we have families that are huge and they would need more tickets. The principals are committed to working through that with their families but generally, they want to try to keep it to 10 tickets,” Thornton said.

She said that the largest senior class this year was a little over 300 students, so that will allow every guest to have a seat with a little buffer.

Part of the problem during this year’s commencement was that there were more people in the stadium than available seating, so when security tried to get people to go to their seats there was nowhere to go.

School Board Chair Brandon Brooks also suggested hiring additional police officers and deputies for security during graduation.