Spring is a season of celebration in Newtown’s schools. The goals set by educators and the educated last September finally come within grasp as May warms into June. The achievements are logged, the achievers listed, bands play, choruses sing, performers take their bows, and awards are bestowed. It all culminates with the Newtown High School graduation ceremonies, which took place this week on Tuesday afternoon at the O’Neill Center at Western Connecticut State University. This is the time when the educational excellence we talk about all year long comes out to be measured and appreciated.

We concern ourselves as a town with the formula for educational excellence not just as a point of pride, though commencement ceremonies never fail to make us proud. The success of our schools colors the future in ways that go far beyond the achievements of individual students. Getting the formula right affects the well-being of everyone and not just those wearing mortarboards in any given year. That formula prescribes a liberal dose of genius — and not just of the smarty-pants variety. Ginere, the Latin root of genius, means to beget, or to be born or come into being. The word genius used to be used to describe the attendant spirit conferred on every person at birth, determining character and shaping fortune. A person’s genius was considered a unique and ineffable suchness, or nature. Genius can also refer to the spirit connected to a place.

So in its pursuit of educational excellence, what is the genius of Newtown? That question is in the air just now as the community considers the pros and cons of closing Hawley Elementary School in light of changing enrollment and the possibility of lower costs. The “Save Our Schools” campaign to prevent Hawley School from being repurposed as, say, the Hawley Recreational Center or the Hawley Office Building presumes that the spirit that animates a school depends, at least in part, on the location and configuration of its facilities. (Much time, treasure, and emotional capital has been expended on that premise for the Sandy Hook Elementary School project now underway off Riverside Road.)

The annual high school graduations, however, serve as a reminder that the true genius of Newtown is embodied mostly in its people, its families, its public servants, and its countless private benefactors. Commencement ceremonies take place way over on the far side of Danbury, miles from the schools that produced the graduates, and yet it is an unmistakable hometown event because of the people gathered there. The spirit of a place, it turns out, is portable when it needs to be. That is something for us to keep in mind as we consider the fate of Hawley School. Closing a school may or may not make economic or educational sense for Newtown. That debate still has to run its course. Either way, we can be confident that the genius of Newtown will arise wherever its people gather and work together in common purpose.