For most grown-ups, memories of their senior year of high school are few and far between. Perhaps they recall who came out to cheer them on at graduation or maybe faint memories remain of a class trip or an epic prank, but this time — an outsized milestone for us all — tends to get caught up in the swirl of experiences and events filling up that piece of the brain. 

I suppose it’s a quirk of working in community news that makes me an outlier. 

Each June, I head back into high schools to capture this outsized milestone for yet another group of kids heading out into the real world, and I’m thrust back in time to the day when I was walking atop the same clouds. 

This year that annual trip back in time has come along sooner than usual, dragged out by the unfolding story of the Livingston Manor and Roscoe schools merger. 

I can’t help but think of the seniors wandering the halls of each school this year, their senior year. Just as they ready to head out on a grand new adventure, the world they’ve known is changing rapidly beneath their feet. 

For some, the merger likely has little effect on their day to day. They’re teenagers, after all, and they’ve got the future to focus on. 

For others, though, the merger adds a level of confusion to this already confusing time.  

I know how these kids feel…literally. 

I was in their shoes the last time Sullivan County went through a school district merger, a high school senior straddling that line between wanting to grow up now, now, now and thinking it would be a whole lot easier if I wasn’t stepping out of my comfort zone just as that comfort zone disappeared. 

I recently asked some of the other seniors from the three districts that were dissolved in 1999 to form the modern day Sullivan West how they felt it affected their senior year. For some, the merger was merely background noise as they marched toward their futures. Others were excited about the merger, even disappointed they wouldn’t be around to see how it all came together. Some were angry and vehemently opposed (although those feelings have faded with time). 

And then there were those of us parked in the anxiety lot. This isn’t to say that we were against the merger. I have a strong memory of excited conversations with my fellow Delaware Valley Central School District classmates about who had hit the magic age that would allow them to cast a vote on the matter. As the sole member of the Class of 99 to be graduating at 16, I was among those disappointed that we could not show up to show our support. 

Was my unease simply part and parcel of my personality? Perhaps. 

Was it because I had lived my whole life up to that point in the DV district, the lone holdout district that voted “no merger” time and time and time again? That may have been it too. In a time when kids were still largely seen and not heard, we had a front row seat to the adults around us waging what often felt like all out war. When the “yes” finally came, our excitement was as much because we were tired of the infighting as it was because us kids were largely in favor of the merger. Looking back, I’m sure we all had a little bit of PTSD. 

Two and half decades later, I know now that it was all going to turn out just fine. 

Would the DMV in the State of Virginia give me a hard time because the only proof I had of completing driver’s ed came from a high school transcript labeled with one name but embossed with another? OK, yes. 

Would I sometimes encounter headaches because “Delaware Valley Central School” does not show up in identity check databases? Yes, that too. Sorry kids, you’ve been warned. 

But all those safety nets I feared were being ripped away? It turned out I didn’t need them after all. 

Even better: When it came time to send a child of my own to the district that came after, they gained access to so many of the things my classmates and I were hoping to vote for all those years before. 

Change is hard, but to the seniors of Livingston Manor and Roscoe, I can say with certainty that you’ll make it through just fine.