What if I told you a local high school kid felt so passionately about his peers getting the academic recognition they deserve that he wrote letters to newspaper editors and launched an online campaign in a noble attempt to right a wrong?
What if I told you this kid, only a sophomore, was willing to publicly challenge – and risk the wrath of – the administrators who recently abolished a unique, 30-year tradition he believes motivated and inspired his fellow students and allowed them to acknowledge their teachers?
And what if I told this kid was among the top 1 percent in his class and chose to take on this task singlehandedly and selflessly, knowing that resurrecting the discontinued “Pride of the Tribe” ceremonies would benefit his peers far more than it would him?
Would you be impressed?
I was.
I was so impressed that I felt compelled to share with you this wonderful, hometown story about a good kid trying to do a good thing for all the right reasons.
You need to know about this Moorings teenager, Gavin D’Elia, the 10th grader who wants Vero Beach High School to continue to honor the top 10 percent of its students, just as it has done every year since 1984 – a proud legacy that was snuffed out in December by the School Advisory Council, acting on the recommendation of Principal Shawn O’Keefe.
The kid’s cause is a worthy one.
“It was the one night a year where the top 10 percent of the students in the school got recognized for their hard work and achievement, and it was a chance for them to honor the teachers who had the greatest impact on their lives,” D’Elia said. “It wasn’t just a reward for their efforts, it was also something they could put on their resumes or college applications.
“And I think other kids were inspired to work harder, just by seeing these kids up on the stage at the Performing Arts Center,” he added. “The top athletes get all kinds of recognition and attention for their success. This was a way to honor the top students for theirs.”
It was VBHS’s way of naming its academic all-star team.
As is so often the case in education, however, the state stepped in and made things worse.
O’Keefe explained his recommendation to end the annual ceremonies, which began in 1984, in a Nov. 18 letter to parents, saying that “state and local changes in grade calculations” made it impossible to fairly identify at mid-year students with weighted grade-point averages (GPAs) that rank among the top 10 percent.
The problem, O’Keefe wrote in his letter, is a new state mandate requiring that end-of-course (EOC) exams, which are graded by the state with results reported in June, count for 30 percent of students’ semester and final course grades – a change that “prohibits us from calculating GPAs until the end of the school year.”
In fact, in an email exchange with me last Friday, O’Keefe said that “for the first time in the history of report cards,” those issued to students this week will include a disclaimer that states, “EOC course grades are temporary and subject to change after EOC scores are released.”
In addition, course weighting for Honors, Advanced Placement and Dual Enrollment classes has changed, starting with this year’s freshman class, and that further complicated the issue.
So, at its Dec. 8 meeting, the School Advisory Council backed O’Keefe and voted unanimously to discontinue the “Pride” ceremonies, with one exception: This year’s deserving seniors will be honored because they are not affected by the EOC exams.
“The VBHS administration is only acting with foresight within this educational environment for the protection of our students,” O’Keefe said of the decision to kill the top-10-percent recognition. “If allowed to continue, it would become evident quickly that we would be celebrating students who, after receiving their final grade, should not have been. We would also have excluded students who, after receiving their final grade, should have been included. This is what results when the tests count for 30 percent.”
He later added: “We have heard far more from parents of students who were in the top 10 percent, and even top 5 percent, who have said they are glad it is being changed, due to the anxiety it caused.”
He said he has “heard directly” from only two current parents who “expressed concern with the decision to end the ceremony.”
And, truth be told, there was no noticeable opposition to the decision – no outrage at all, really – until after it was made.
“That’s because there wasn’t much awareness of what was being done until after the vote,” D’Elia said. “As more people hear about it, though, they want to bring it back.”
That’s where D’Elia came in: In addition to writing letters to the editors of local newspapers and using social media sites to rally support, he posted an online petition at Change.org, where he has garnered more than 500 signatures.
“We’re getting about 100 signatures a week, mostly from parents, students, former students who were in the top 10 percent, and even teachers and former teachers,” D’Elia said. “The whole community is becoming aware of it, and I think it’s having an impact.”
Let’s hope so – because it won’t be easy to convince O’Keefe and the administration that maybe they’ve made a mistake.
O’Keefe said he and his staff are exploring new ways to celebrate academic achievement, including an Honor Roll format in which there would be “no need to hair-split GPAs to the 100th of a point to include only 10 percent for academic recognition.”
The Honor Roll was introduced at the start of the current semester, and O’Keefe said the change was “necessary to protect our students’ well-being.”
D’Elia, who was summoned to the principal’s office earlier this month so O’Keefe could explain why the “Pride” program was dumped and discuss the sophomore’s efforts to revive it, isn’t opposed to an Honor Roll or any other potential programs designed to recognize the academic success of students and their teachers.
But he said they should not replace the “Pride” ceremonies.
“An Honor Roll doesn’t take into account weighted classes,” D’Elia said. “Getting an A in History isn’t the same as getting an A in AP History. But an Honor Roll doesn’t differentiate between the two.
“The top 10-percent recognition is based on weighted GPAs and rewards students for taking tougher classes.”
As for the dilemma created by EOC scores not being available until June, D’Elia said administrators could simply stipulate that the calculations of the weighted GPAs were based solely on first-semester grades – without the EOC exams – or perhaps even in conjunction with the previous year’s final grades.
“We’re talking about only two or three kids who might be right on the border and might not make the cut that year,” D’Elia said. “And if they don’t, it would be no different than if you tried out for the football or soccer team in the fall and didn’t make it. You could try out again in the spring.
“This is a Vero Beach High School tradition, so the school has jurisdiction on how to run it,” he added. “They can set the criteria any way they want. They can find a way to make this work.”
I believe he’s right. I hope his one-man campaign convinces O’Keefe to reconsider his decision.
I’m thrilled that a high school sophomore cares enough about tradition, academics and his fellow students to embrace this worthwhile cause.
Impressive, huh?