Students will be able to decorate graduation caps with fewer restrictions after administrators revised the policy.

These changes came after students and parents raised concerns about how the previous cap decorating guidelines excluded those attending community colleges or not attending college at all.

“I don’t feel comfortable opening it up to just anything,” principal Alan Arbabi said. “In my mind I went through a reasonableness test. What’s reasonable? My goal is to honor everyone’s extended learning. Collin College is a fine college and they are providing a lot of great things, but if a person’s journey in education is to want to go to Collin and eventually end up at Arkansas and if they want to put Arkansas somehow on their cap, that’s fine with me.”

Those not attending college can decorate their cap with McKinney High related decorations.

“Not a “Mactown” cap, no Dr. Suess quotes, no song lyrics,” Mr. Arbabi said. “When I look at it I will be able to see that it is a McKinney High thing such as logos that we have used before just McKinney High related things. I can’t say that everybody has to put an “M” or “MHS” or whatever, I’m just going to say that when you look at it, it clearly has a McKinney High School look.”

With graduation less than a month away, administrators will not be able to approve cap designs.

“It has to meet McKinney High School standards, and if we think it is inappropriate we still reserve the right to pull it and give you a clean one,” Mr. Arbabi said. “If you are going to Collin you can put your final destination school and also anybody else that isn’t going to college and wants to decorate it they can, but it has to be McKinney High School related.”

Senior Anne Penprase said restricting cap decorations at all doesn’t help her represent her future plans.

“Even though I’m transferring from Collin after a year, I feel weird decorating my cap like Texas Tech because I’m not really going there next year,” Anne said. “I wanted to put a clock that said, ‘It’s about time’ and it was harmless and because it’s been a long four years I felt like it would’ve been fitting for my situation.”

Because of these changes in regulations, senior Danny Suarez plans to decorate his cap.

“I haven’t even applied to Collin yet because you can really apply whenever, but I know where I want to go afterwards and I know what I want to do eventually and at first I was like, ‘If I can’t put that on my cap, I might as well not decorate it,’” Danny said. “I was always looking forward to being able to decorate it how I wanted to, but I think these changes are a good step.”