Dayana Henderson smiled as she posed in her prom dress for nearly a dozen family members. The senior at Charles Herbert Flowers High School in Springdale, Md., flexed her muscles for one of the photos, as her family cheered her on.
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“Yeah, flex the muscles!” one family member called out.
For Henderson, 18, and her family, her senior prom in late May was the last celebration before she left for college. She will be the first in her family to continue on to higher education, and she was an honor student at Flowers High. Senior prom was the “pinnacle,” said her mother, Kelly McBride.
“She legit broke every generational curse,” McBride, 35, said. “This is like the perfect reward before she goes off to college.”
Across the Washington region, many high school seniors were able to go to a school dance for the first time in roughly two years, after school systems prohibited mass gatherings to curb the spread of the coronavirus. Prince George’s County Public Schools, which includes Flowers High School and has been the most stringent system in Maryland with coronavirus protocols, lifted restrictions and let schools host prom events again this year.
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School leaders, parents and volunteers flew into action. At Flowers, Nakisha Mebane, a teacher and the 12th grade sponsor, had to come up with funds for a $10,000 deposit on a location. With fundraising frozen for the past two years, getting the money was tough, she said. Other schools were faster to put down deposits and were beating her in securing locations.
Eventually, Mebane was able to secure a room for roughly 600 people in February at The Hotel at the University of Maryland. The venue had two proms scheduled this year, compared with zero the year before, according to Adriana Niepa, the director of sales and marketing. The venue expects more next year when schools have more time to plan for such events and county health guidelines are less restrictive.
After the venue came the next step of logistics to coordinate decorations. The company the school used before was not doing prom decorations this year. Mebane had to improvise and find decorations that would fit the prom theme of Hollywood. She and school volunteers got to work planning and decorating the venue themselves.
Mebane found a 360-degree camera to capture panoramic photos of the celebrating students and set up a life-size cutout of an Academy Award in the corner. Imani Brown, 17, and Mariah Mullins, 17, both juniors at Flowers, blew up balloons hours before the event. Hotel staffers vacuumed around the room and set out the placards for the garlic green beans, baked salmon and Caesar salad the high-schoolers would eat later that night.
It was the first dance for Brown and Mullins during their high school tenure. Early in the pandemic, they rarely got to see much of friends, except for the occasional birthday party where they drove by in cars. Prom at Flowers is usually reserved for seniors, but because the two were working the event as volunteers through their roles on the student government association, they were able to attend.
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“At Flowers, we are known for our prom looks, so I can’t wait to see what we come out with this year,” Brown said, adding that many of the students treated the event like the Met Gala. She referenced her brother’s prom in 2017, years before the coronavirus shut down schools and sent students home to learn, when most of the students matched their attire with their cars.
The high school tradition that had been taken from students by a pandemic was back, and so was the new normal of coronavirus precautions. Outside the doorway to the ballroom, volunteers set up goody bags and a coronavirus testing site. Students had to submit proof of a negative coronavirus test to attend the event, but for the few who did not file in time, the school provided rapid antigen test kits at a table near the front doors. A failed test meant students were turned away.
Flowers Principal Gorman Brown said the last event many of the 2022 graduating class attended before the pandemic began was their sophomore year homecoming. Many of the students had to adjust at the beginning of the school year to seeing peers they had not seen in person since they were 15.
“With the experience they had, it is wonderful to see that they still get to do this,” Brown said. “They get a chance to celebrate entering adulthood, graduating and being able to have this lifelong memory that so many of us have.”
Flowers was one of the last schools in Prince George’s County Public Schools, the second-largest school system in Maryland, to host their prom. Other school systems, such as Montgomery County Public Schools, hosted their events earlier in May. Many District schools have their proms scheduled through June.
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In Upper Marlboro, Md., Michael Patterson, 17, bought a corsage online for his date the day before he was set to go to prom. His mother, Jackey Jackson, made sure the two made it to cleaners before 5 p.m. to pick up his pants and also talked him through swabbing his nose for his mandated coronavirus test.
“This year was really exciting because we were not even sure if they were going to have a graduation,” Jackson said. “They made the decision that we could have the traditional graduation back at Show Place Arena and then acknowledged that we could have a prom. The news started coming in slowly but surely.”
For Patterson, a senior at Frederick Douglass High School, the minute he placed the order for the corsage, the moment set in. “Oh, wow, I have a date to prom,” he said. “For the longest time, my mom was way more excited than me. But I think now I’m definitely caught up with her in the excitement.”
Back at the prom at Flowers, students arrived roughly an hour before to take photos and pose in front of their families. One student was escorted by a motorbike motorcade into the front loop of the building. Others showed up in limos, drove their own cars, or were dropped off by their parents.
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Administrators checked that students paid their $100 ticket fee and tested negative for the coronavirus as they walked into the room. Students mingled as they complimented their outfits. As one couple walked up from the escalator, administrators called out, “Get that dress!” Her date quickly picked up the back of her dress so the train would not drag along the escalator steps.
It was not until “Act Up” by the City Girls came on that students flooded the ballroom floor to dance. “It was boring at first. The music wasn’t hype enough,” Melina Esparza, 17, said as she walked off the dance floor.
As students mingled and danced, Mebane passed out a QR code for students to vote for prom king and queen. Malachi Travers, 17, and Mackenzie Hooks Harris, 18, had been campaigning for weeks on social media for their peers to award them with the honors.
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As the music paused, Brown, the principal, stood atop the ballroom stage and called out, “Are you all ready for the announcement of your prom king and queen?”
The group of hundreds of students cheered. It was the moment many of them had been waiting around for. More students flooded back into the ballroom with their phones recording in their hands. Brown first named Travers, and the students cheered even louder. The 17-year-old walked up to the stage to put on his crown.
Hooks Harris waited at the edge of the dance floor to see if her name would be called. A group of her friends circled around her, filming so they could capture her reaction. When Brown called out her name, she froze before walking to the stage and dabbing with Travers. She said afterward that the moment “felt surreal.”
“After the school year, and two years of not being around each other, I feel like this fills up for it,” Hooks Harris said. “This definitely feels like a family celebration.”