Times are challenging right now for all Mainers, including the high school seniors across the state who have had their plans for their final year of high school drastically altered. 

As a way of cataloging these unusual and challenging times for Maine’s high school seniors, Pine Tree Watch has launched a video series, 2020: A Class Dismissed, to document the experiences of Maine's high school seniors as they navigate a year cut short because of the pandemic. 

“With so much focus on the death, despair and financial pain that’s accompanied the spread of the coronavirus, Pine Tree Watch felt it was important to capture the stories of a senior class that has been prematurely dismissed,” the organization, a non-profit news website and product of the Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting, said. 

The series’ description reads: 

They were born in the weeks and months after 9/11 and are graduating in the year of a crippling pandemic. Maine’s high school seniors have lived through some of the most profound change our country has ever witnessed.

With nearly every Maine high school cancelling in-class lessons for the remainder of the school year, these young adults are missing out on cornerstone experiences that ease the transition from being a child to being an adult.

No prom. No senior sports season. No yearbook signatures. No final play or performance. No awards dinner. No senior prank. No senior ditch day.

For so many, no final farewell.

From now until the middle of June, Pine Tree Watch’s Bailey Beltramo will speak to seniors from high schools across the state in order to tell the story of Maine’s Class of 2020 and how the students have been impacted by the disruption to their last year of high school. 

If you’re a high school senior in Maine, or you know a high school senior in Maine, who would like to participate in this project, contact Pine Tree Watch by clicking here.

To view the video series, click here.