It was a spring none of us expected. Our young graduates, poised to catapult to the next stages of their lives and educations, certainly never imagined completing every credit and assignment online, hardly glimpsing a teacher in person over these last three months.

We are sure they also never imagined sitting in cars, parking lots or their homes for most of their graduation ceremonies.

It’s been a bittersweet time, with many among our students mourning lost opportunities, missing friends and lamenting chances that won’t come about again. We share those feelings of loss, but what does leave us joyful and positive is the effort and the love that our faculties, administrators, parent committees and staff put into making graduations extra-special for our students. We thank them for their creativity and their “sky’s the limit” approaches, each school in its own way, toward making sure each student felt the enormity of their accomplishments.

As we look toward the summer, seemingly the only topic on every parent’s mind now, we know this time will come with a new set of unique challenges and certainly no playbook to refer back to. But, again, we just have to applaud the pure chutzpah and ingenuity of our many camp organizers who are stepping into the breach to help out campers whose sleepaway programs have been canceled. We got so many calls and new advertisements from these creative souls in just the past week alone and we hope they all succeed.

We know, as do many other parents, that the only real choice we have this summer is to make the best of it, and we are proud to see that everyone has the same goal: to make our kids understand they are special, loved, engaged and challenged, all through this crazy summer.