Just figuring out how the traditional commencement speeches would be handled took two months’ preparation for principal John Burrows at McMinn County High School.
The Athens, Tenn., school’s Class of 2010 graduated 17 valedictorians last weekend, all tied with a grade point average of 4.0.
“We traditionally do speeches at graduation. When you have five or six, we can accommodate that. But with 17, that was unique,” Mr. Burrows said. McMinn has had multiple valedictorians in the past, but this year’s tally is decidedly unusual, he said.
“I met with the students periodically throughout the year just acknowledging the elephant in the room,” he said.
Students, parents and officials agreed that a video presentation during graduation in the gym that highlighted each of the 17 valedictorians would be the fairest way to recognize their achievements, he said.
“We probably had 5,500 people crammed in there, but it was a beautiful moment for those children,” he said.
Molly Irons, one of the 17, said she and the rest of McMinn’s scholarly group decided early on that a double-digit line-up of commencement speeches was out of the question.
“Pretty much all of us were all against the speeches because that would be waaaay too much time, and by the fourth person no one would’ve cared anyway,” said Miss Irons, 18.
“In the end, it turned out really good,” she said. “We just had a slide show of our pictures and a quote with our name.”
Marlene Rue said she would like to have heard her son, McKeehanon, give an address to his classmates, but the logistics were too daunting.
“Of course, every parent wants to be able to hear their child speak, but at the same time you realize that at 17, that’s going to take a lot of time,” Mrs. Rue said. “I feel like they came up with a very good compromise.”
Her son agreed.
“I felt like we got the recognition, but it wasn’t time consuming,” he said.
Guidance counselor Andrew Hudson said this year’s situation stems from a change a few years ago when Tennessee adopted a uniform grading scale with unweighted GPAs to put the Hope scholarship on an even playing field among schools with varied grading methods.
Before, one school’s “A” might have fallen into a grade range from 93 to 100 while another school’s could be 95 to 100, Mr. Hudson said.
The standardized grading scale combined with McMinn officials’ coinciding decision not to weight grades for ranking purposes, he said. Formerly, students gained extra points for taking advanced placement courses which could produce a grade point average higher than an “A.”
Under the present system, “we have several students who have accumulated 4.0 GPAs and they are all considered valedictorian of their class,” he said. He said he’s torn on whether one way is better than the other.
“I don’t think they’ve worked any harder than previous classes have, I just think they seem to be more aware of the advantages of having a 4.0,” he said.
One of those advantages is scholarship money.
“This group has accepted $6.1 million in scholarships,” he said.
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