The show must go on.

With nearly 350 Vicksburg Warren School District students ready to graduate Thursday and Friday, the weather threw a wrench in the plans of Vicksburg and Warren Central high schools’ graduation ceremonies.

“With 16 ½ inches of rain, if we waited until Thursday and then told parents they were only going to get two tickets, all these people who are supposed to come wouldn’t have been able to come,” Warren Central High School principal Jamie Creel said. “I can’t perceive us getting a chair on that field even if we don’t get any more rain the rest of the week, it’s that saturated.”

Plans were under way to find an alternate venue for the annual outdoor graduations early Monday as heavy rains continued to fall throughout the day.

“The principals of the high schools came to us and asked if we could pay for them to have graduation ceremonies in the convention center,” assistant superintendent David Campbell said. “We started talking before 7 a.m. and the principals had already talked with each other and we had to see if the convention center was even available,” Campbell said.

“The VWSD called us before 9 a.m. to see if we could accommodate them,” Vicksburg Convention Center executive director Annette Kirklin said.

“It was just happenstance that we are available Thursday and I’m just thrilled that we’re able to accommodate both graduations in the same day.” Kirklin said. “There will be a lot of coordination with both schools.”

“We started working out how many we could seat. We’ll have 2,000 people in the audience on the ground floor, and overflow in grandstand seating upstairs,” Kirklin said. “The ceremony will be piped throughout the building and shown on screens.”

“What we’re looking at now is holding 2,500 for each graduation,” she said. “We can comfortably seat that many and that’s not counting graduates.”

The school district will provide transportation from the two parking structures on Mulberry Street to the convention center, Campbell said.

“Safety was a concern with slick surfaces and the principals did a great job coordinating all this early,” Campbell said.

Waiting until Wednesday or Thursday to make a decision was never considered.

“We tried to make the best decision to allow the most amount of people to come, and at least we’re able to give each graduate nine tickets,” Creel said. There is no cost for those tickets.

Vicksburg High School will hold its graduation at 4 p.m. and Warren Central’s will begin at 8 p.m.

“To allow students and employees to participate we are implementing an early dismissal,” Campbell said. “Thursday will be a 60 percent early release day for all schools in our District to help accommodate the weather related graduation schedule changes.”

Elementary schools will dismiss at 12:05 p.m., junior highs at 1:10 p.m. and high school 1:15 p.m.