Grads, you’re on your own.

I don’t have any young’uns in Columbia County schools anymore. My last one picked up her diploma at the James Brown Arena and Airhorn Test Facility last year, signaling the final trip across a high school stage for my girls.

So except for the need one day for service from one of you – you know, at a drive-through window, if this diploma is the highest you ever achieve, or perhaps at the doctor’s office, if you’re one of the many smart ones – it would seem that I don’t have a vested interest in your success or failure.

School is out. It’s up to parents to make sure trouble isn’t in.

Each year as the school year ends, thousands of students are turned loose to summer vacation. Many of them are kept in daycare facilities, or enrolled in camps or participate in other organized activities.

But many are left alone while their parents work, and far too many of them wind up looking for – and finding – mischief. Typically, the number of juvenile complaints rises during the summer as kids have more time and fewer people are watching them.

The Republican Party delegates who gathered in Athens for their annual state convention this past weekend heard a cautionary message from Gov. Nathan Deal about the future of the GOP.

Deal tried to warn party activists that the same demographic trends that helped re-elect Barack Obama as president last year are also reshaping the electorate in this conservative state.

“Demographics are shifting in Georgia,” Deal said, citing the fact that in the state’s public schools, 56 percent of the enrollment is now made up of non-white students.