Midlands schools pay big bills to graduate at Colonial Life Arena

The number of Midlands venues capable of hosting hundreds of high school graduates and thousands of guests at one time under a roof is largely limited to one: Colonial Life Arena in downtown Columbia.

Officials from multiple local districts say that while they enjoy the experience of graduating at the University of South Carolina-owned arena and the quality of its facilities, the costs – ranging from $45,000 to more than $101,000 for the area’s four largest districts – are hard to swallow. And given the scarcity of large indoor facilities in the area, they have almost no choice but to pay the bills.

“If we had another place to go, we’d go,” said Anne Elam, Lexington 1’s academic officer for innovation. “I think all the high schools in the Midlands area would take advantage of some other facility if we had one. And, of course, we would love to pay less. But it is what it is.”

Twenty-two schools from Richland and Lexington counties will hold commencement ceremonies over two weeks in late May and early June at Colonial Life Arena.

Offering a roof over their heads and a seating capacity of up to about 12,000, the arena provides an ample and comfortable venue for the ceremonies and eliminates the worry of inclement weather that can come with outdoor events.

The arena does not profit from hosting high school graduations, said its general manager, Sid Kenyon. The costs it bills to school districts, he said, are “to pay for the rental of equipment and the hourly charge for the people who work the graduations.”

GOODBYE, CAROLINA COLISEUM

Last year was the first year local school districts held graduations at Colonial Life, transitioning from USC’s Carolina Coliseum, which hosted its last graduations in 2014 before being converted to a full-time sports practice facility.

That switch meant doubling the costs for Richland 1’s seven high school graduations, from $52,986 at Carolina Coliseum in 2014 to $101,445 at Colonial Life in 2015, according to district spokeswoman Karen York.

Lexington 1 and Richland 2, the Midlands’ two largest school districts by population, each paid more than $70,000 to host five graduations apiece at Colonial Life last year, officials said.

For Lexington-Richland 5’s three high school graduations at Colonial Life last year, the charge was $45,138, district spokesman Mark Bounds said. Next year, the district expects to add a fourth graduation at the arena, Bounds said.

The charges come to around $14,000 to $15,000 per graduating school.

Graduation costs for Lexington 1 jumped more than 57 percent from the roughly $47,000 it was charged in 2014 at the Carolina Coliseum to $74,000 last year at Colonial Life, Elam said.

Richland 2 saw a nearly identical increase from 2014 to 2015, said Harry Miley, the district’s chief financial officer. The cost difference included a more than $20,000 increase in charges for parking services, Miley said.

Colonial Life also billed Richland 2 more than $2,600 for catering to feed the arena’s employees, Miley said.

“We felt like that was awfully expensive,” Miley said of the total cost of the graduations. “We met with the USC folks, and we were hoping that we could identify some costs that could perhaps be reduced, and we couldn’t.”

OTHERS PAY LESS

In comparison to graduations at Colonial Life, Clemson University’s Littlejohn Coliseum charged the Pickens County school district a total of $18,538 to host four graduations in 2014, the last year ceremonies were held there before the coliseum began undergoing renovations, district spokesman John Eby said. That’s about $4,500 per school.

In Greenville County, 14 high schools split their graduation ceremonies between Timmons Arena at Furman University and the Bon Secours Wellness Arena in downtown Greenville.

Bon Secours charged $3,000 apiece to the eight schools that graduated there last year, and Timmons charged $4,894 each for six schools’ ceremonies, according to district spokesman Oby Lyles.

In total, the 14 Greenville County high schools paid just more than $53,000 for their graduation venues last year. Richland 1, with half as many schools, paid nearly twice as much to use Colonial Life.

COLONIAL LIFE’S SIZE MATTERS

Having a large venue matters, Miley said. Some 5,500 people can show up for Spring Valley High School’s graduations.

“What are you going to do, hold it somewhere smaller and tell graduates they can’t bring their family? Limit attendance to three family members?” he said.

“We want our students to have the very best experience possible,” said Lexington-Richland 5’s Bounds. And Colonial Life, and the Carolina Coliseum before it, “provide that opportunity that our students can bring pretty much unlimited guests to their graduations.”

Some of the districts say they have considered hosting graduations at their schools’ football stadiums. But that would leave the ceremonies vulnerable to weather conditions.

And in cases of inclement weather, if schools had to relocate their ceremonies indoors, that could mean last-minute restrictions on the number of guests who can attend.

STAYING ON CAMPUS

On-campus graduations are a tradition at nearby Kershaw County’s three high schools, district spokeswoman Mary Anne Byrd said.

Lugoff-Elgin and North Central high schools both graduate outdoors at their football stadiums, and Camden High School graduates indoors in its gymnasium.

“It’s a very reasonable way to hold a very dignified and nice ceremony, and still not have to pay a lot of money to do so,” Byrd said. “It also gives a real special touch to being where you’ve done all your schoolwork, all your academic time, to be able to look over and be on the campus where this is a celebration of finishing up.”

But the lower cost and sentimentality of the on-campus venues comes with the downside of limiting the number of guests at the two larger schools, Camden and Lugoff-Elgin.

Camden can accommodate its 225 graduates and about 1,600 guests – six guest tickets per student – in its gym.

Lugoff-Elgin, with 390 graduates this year, plans for about 4,700 in attendance in its stadium and issues 12 guest tickets per graduate. But if rain causes the ceremony to move indoors, only four guests tickets are allowed per graduate.

In spite of the limitations that come with hosting on-campus graduations, the burden of cost at Colonial Life could drive Richland 2 to consider making that trade-off next year, district spokeswoman Libby Roof said.

“We are seriously looking at what our other options would be,” Roof said.

This story was originally published April 23, 2016 at 5:46 PM with the headline "Midlands schools pay big bills to graduate at Colonial Life Arena."