Plans for Grafton High Prom lead Select Board to disband Together We Can

The Select Board unanimously agreed to disband the Together We Can committee, effective immediately, a week after plans for a private “Prom Voyage” were announced.

“There seems like there’s a lot of good intention here… but it seems like good intentions that have gone a little sideways,” Select Board member Mathew Often said.

Grafton High School is not holding an official prom this year on recommendation from the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education due to COVID-19 guidelines. But Together We Can and the Bon Voyage Committee quietly spread the word last week that a seniors-only event called “Prom Voyage” would be held at the Blissful Meadows Country Club in Uxbridge on June 5.

Some history: Together We Can is officially a subcommittee of the Select Board, started in 1995 from a health protection grant funded through the tobacco tax. Its subcommittee, Bon Voyage, fundraises throughout the year for an all-night after-graduation celebration and other events honoring GHS seniors.

Debbie Trapasso, who chairs Together We Can, said the Bon Voyage parents decided to put the event together after hearing that multiple families were planning their own events. Concern about alcohol, as well as some students being left out, spurred them on.

“It is not a prom in the traditional sense of a prom,” Trapasso said. “There’s no pressure to get a tux, a fancy dress, or a date.”

While Bon Voyage did meet with Grafton High Principal Jim Pignataro to discuss the event, Together We Can never had it on their meeting agendas or took a vote endorsing it, she added. The School Committee and Superintendent of Schools Jay Cummings were not consulted.

Select Board member Colleen Roy, who initiated the motion to disband Together We Can, questioned why a government entity under the Select Board would go against a decision made by the School Department.

“Together We Can has kind of gone away from its original charge,” Roy said.

Bon Voyage raised $34,000 this year by holding a mattress sale and selling boxes of Krispy Kreme doughnuts. Some of those funds will be used for senior events such as food trucks at the high school while some are needed to offset the cost of Prom Voyage. Tickets for seniors still cost $60 each to help with bus transportation and food.

The Select Board agreed that Together We Can’s mission should be re-thought and that it would be more appropriate to have it fall under the School Committee.

Prom Voyage will still go forward.

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