OTTAWA -- Graduating high school students across eastern Ontario are being told graduation ceremonies will be delayed until the fall due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

In a letters to students on Friday, the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board and the Ottawa Catholic District School Board said that graduation ceremonies will be delayed until the fall, at which time it will be evaluated based on health guidelines.

“We know that things are different this year,” reads the OCDSB letter to students. “But our plan is to work with you to come up with ways to celebrate the class of 2020 and abide by public health guidance to keep you safe.”

While in a statement to CTV News Ottawa, the Catholic District School Board of Eastern Ontario says proms at schools across the board have been cancelled altogether. Many were planned for before May 31, and closures until that date make going ahead with them impossible.

“Under the direction of local medical officers of health, the CDSBEO has been instructed to cancel all prom events,” says the board in a statement. “We are very saddened that our graduating students will be missing out on this exciting and much anticipated event.”

Students across the city are disappointed. 

“Graduation is so, so important, It’s the thing you look forward to as soon as you get into high school,” says Longfields-Davidson Heights student Jessica McGraw.

“We were going to take pictures with my friends, and just dance in our dresses,” says Earl of March student Ana-Paola Solano, who has her prom dress hanging in her room.

Canterbury High School graduate Kareila Davis says she’s going to miss wearing her dream dress, one she spent a year picking out with her mom.

“Be able to walk down the stairs, and see my girlfriend, her reaction to my dress,” she says. “Be able to take pictures with my mom, and my girlfriend and all my friends....I was going to be able to do all these things and now I don’t get a chance to do them. You don’t get a second prom.” 

Solano says she’s focused on the positive for now, penning a song for her fellow grads.

“I have the dress, I look at it and I’m like ‘you know what I will wear this,’ maybe a little later than expected but I will wear it.”