Texas High School Student Suing Her School Over Her GPA
She is complaining about one point being miscalculated. It is potentially costing her tens of thousands of dollars.
I got to admit, I really felt bad for the kids that took grades too seriously. I remember kids being in literal tears in my class when they would get an 88 on a test. I thought that was a good score, but in their household it was an A or nothing. Now you may think this next story is about one of those students, but she actually has a point to her lawsuit.
Dalee Sullivan recently graduated from Alpine High School over in Alpine, Texas. She put in a lot of work and was able to rank third in her graduating class. However, she was not able to get valedictorian because she had one point less than the person ahead of her. Dalee thinks the school made a miscalculation and this is costing her tens of thousands of dollars.
Dalee is attending an out of state university this coming fall. If Dalee was a valedictorian, she would save $31,000 PER YEAR on her tuition. So yeah, she wants to check to make sure the school didn't make a mistake. She thinks she is able to prove the school messed up.
Dalee says according to the school's policy, a class not required to graduate does not factor into your GPA. She says a physics class brought her down that one point, but that class was not a requirement. She says that her federal government class and a British literature class were requirements, but did not go into the GPA.
Dalee also believes that she has lost out on acceptances and scholarships due to not being the valedictorian. Superintendent for Alpine ISD, Becky McCutchen wrote in an affidavit that at first, grades were not being weighed according to the district’s newly updated grading policy. However, McCutchen said that even when grades were weighed again with the correct process, Sullivan still ranked third in her class.
Dalee is asking the courts for an impartial third party to review the grades and see if the GPA changes. Let's just say Dalee goes to this college for four years, she is going to end up having to pay an additional $124,000 in tuition over four years for not being valedictorian.
A judge has denied Sullivan’s request for a third-party audit, but he did rule that the graduate can go through with the school’s grievance process. The school will have to send her a written response explaining how they calculated the class ranking. If that’s not satisfactory, Sullivan can set up a meeting with the school board to make her case.