Pennsylvania Homeschoolers Accreditation Agency

2026 PHAA Graduation Ceremony

Monday June 8, 2026

Deadlines for ordering tickets is June 1

The PHAA 2026 graduation ceremony will take place on Monday June 8 at the Bongiorno Conference Center in Carlisle. It is too late to order overnight accommodations, but the deadline for ordering the Dinner Buffet has been extended until May 25, and the deadline for ordering tickets for seats at the ceremony has been extended until June 1 (but may be curtailed if all of the available seats get reserved). You can place your orders in the store at this website.

The ceremony will start with a sit-down Dinner Buffet at 5:00pm in the Bongiorno Center's Dining Center. The ceremony itself will begin in the adjoining (and beautiful) Pennsylvania Room at 6:30pm. At 6:15, just before the ceremony, graduates will gather in the Delaware Room where they will put on their caps and gowns, preparing to promenade together into the ceremony. Here is the campus map of the Bongiorno Center which shows the location of this building.

Here's a map showing the location of the Bongiorno Conference Center. It is centrally located for Pennsylvania: about 30 minutes from Harrisburg, 2 hours from Philadelphia and 3 hours from Pittsburgh. The address of the center is 430 Union Hall Rd., Carlisle PA 17013.

Our commencement speaker is Will Estrada, Esq., a PHAA graduate from the class of 2003. He and his wife, Rachel (a homeschool graduate from Virginia), homeschool their two sons in Northern Virginia. He is a Senior Counsel at Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) where he advocates for homeschool freedom and helps to make homeschooling possible for member families. Before workng for HSLDA, he worked in the U.S. government's Office for Civil Rights and served as the president of the Parental Rights Foundation.

The only required expense is the $6 Ceremony Ticket. Everyone in your party must have a ticket, even the graduate. The other items below are optional. Here are their prices:

All students who participate have to post a 50-100 word biography of themselves for inclusion in the ceremony program. Optional: You can perform a 5 minute performance or give a 5 minute speech at the ceremony. Normally, every graduate who offers to perform or give a speech is included in the program. Click here to post your biography and info about your optional performance or speech by June 1.

Our 2025 ceremony was in the gym at the same location. (Click here to watch it on our YouTube channel.) This year's ceremony will be quite similar.

Any color of cap and gown is OK for the ceremony. (We will have a variety of colors to represent the diversity of homeschooling.) We will have a few extra at the ceremony.

You can click here to place your orders for the ceremony in the PHAA Store.

[Note: If you have any medically necessary dietary restrictions in your party, click on the following link to post them: https://bongiornocc.com/dietary-requests/ by May 18 - specify which meal or meals.]