BUTLER TWP — Butler school officials are planning some changes to the district's annual commencement ceremony.

John Wyllie, senior high school principal, laid out his suggested changes to the school board's education committee Monday night.

One suggestion was that all students wear gold caps and gowns instead of boys wearing gold and girls wearing white.

One advantage of this would be to avoid potential controversy in the future.

“It is easily foreseeable that we will have transgender students whose biological and psychological identities do not match, resulting in potential requests to wear the color of the opposite gender we would normally assign,” Wyllie wrote in a memo sent to the school board and administrators.

Given room for added seating in the school's gymnasium and smaller class sizes, he advised distributing four tickets to all students. In the past, each graduate got two tickets for family members, though honors with distinction graduates received four each.

The ceremony is normally held in Art Bernardi Stadium, but is moved into the gymnasium if the weather is not favorable.

Wyllie also proposed a revamp to the commencement program itself, including having students walk across a stage to be handed a diploma cover by school officials, which has never been a part of the ceremony.

“Our students don't get that photo opportunity, they don't get to walk across the stage and get handed something,” he said.

Having students read their fellow students names is something that makes the Butler ceremony unique and that should stay, he said.

“Students read other students' names. It is a thing that draws our students into their own commencement,” he said.

Under the new program, school administrators would ask for 20 student volunteers to read names as the graduates walk across the stage.

Students who applied to be one of the two theme speakers but were not picked by a teacher committee would be offered the chance to read names first, he said.

The school board did not take a vote, but voiced their approval and support for the changes.