Reading comprehension is an important part of any school curriculum, but apparently every single member of the Hernando County School Board missed those days in class. The five members voted unanimously to stop recognizing students as valedictorians and salutatorians and hadn't realized what they had done until afterward.
Starting in 2016, high schools in the county will no longer recognize the top two students of the graduating class.
School board members were saying they were voting on the basis of the recommendation of a advisory committee, but apparently didn't quite understand what that committee was advising. They now hope to undo the change, and some members hope to launch an investigation into, uh, apparently how lazy they are.
"We need to figure out where the communication breakdown was, and why the board was not informed," school board member Dianne Bonfield tells WTSP. "I can't understand this [but] we will get to the bottom of it."
"To be honest, I'm guilty as anyone," Superintendent Bryan Blavatt told the station. "I didn't notice it excluded valedictorian and salutatorians. I thought this was a way to recognize more kids, not less."
The new rule eliminates the traditional graduation positions and instead recognizes the top ten percent of the glass as graduating cum laude and summa cum laude distinctions, similar to colleges.
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