The day after the Caledonia High School Class of 2024 turned their tassels, school administrators were told there was a mistake with the final grade calculations.
Salutatorian Morgan Holbrook’s final GPA was higher than the school had originally believed due to a mishap with the grading system, calling Valedictorian Candra Broome’s title into question.
Ultimately, the district opted to let the two girls share the title of valedictorian for posterity.
“As soon as my counselor came in last Monday morning and told me about the mistake, I told her the only thing we can do is fix it,” CHS Principal Gregory Elliott told The Dispatch. “And that’s what we’re going to do — be honest and fix things.”
Holbrook told The Dispatch she first noticed the mistake after the graduation ceremony, while she was looking at her final report card. She had not received the correct grade for one of her dual credit classes.
Elliott said those classes usually have an added weight since they are college courses, meaning an A would count for more than it would on a 4-point grade scale. For some reason, he said, the system didn’t add the multiplier for one nine-week term of Holbook’s class.
“When the grades were corrected, the girls were within a few hundredths of a point of each other,” he said.
Elliott decided the best course of action was naming the two girls co-valedictorians, both because the miscalculation was so small and because the two girls had been neck-in-neck for the title for most of high school. Kathryn McKinney was subsequently named the new salutatorian.
“Some people will agree with that, some people won’t, but my decision was I needed to correct the mistake that was made,” he said. “I needed to correct the mistake made for Morgan Holbrook, but at the same time, I was not going to do something to hurt Candra Broome because they’re both very deserving young ladies.”
Holbrook said school officials contacted her mother to tell them about the decision. While Holbrook understood it was an honest mistake, she was still upset about the situation.
“It’s been a lot,” she said. “I was sad at first. I was kind of shocked when I noticed the grades were wrong, and then I felt bad for the other girl because it wasn’t her fault that it all happened.”
Holbrook is attending Mississippi State University in the fall, where she plans to major in microbiology. She hopes to eventually pursue a graduate degree in genetics. Becoming valedictorian, she said, has been a long time goal for Holbrook.
“I studied really hard for those last finals,” she said. “I did really well on them because I wanted the chance to get valedictorian.”
Elliott said both Holbrook and Broome are dedicated students who deserve the title.
“Normally, our valedictorian really separates themselves from other people, but in this case they were just really really close,” he said “… They’ve probably been number one and number two ever since ninth grade. They’re really good kids (and) hard workers.”
Holbrook said she doesn’t believe Elliott, the school or her co-valedictorian are at fault. She said now she’s hoping the mistake isn’t made again.
“It should have been caught, but I do get it a little bit because there are so many students,” she said. “The thing right now is making sure this doesn’t happen again because I don’t think it should be on the student who should be done with high school, who just graduated, to look at their grades and notice that (they are) wrong.”
The Dispatch could not reach Broome by press time.
McRae is a general assignment and education reporter for The Dispatch.
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