School delays ceremony after only 5 of 33 seniors meet graduation requirements

While schools are starting to wrap up the 2022-2023 school year, a Texas high school has added a few weeks of classes so more members of the Class of 2023 can graduate.

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Administrators at Marlin High School broke the bad news to parents last week that only five of 33 seniors have met the graduation requirements this year, the Waco Tribune-Herald reported.

Many missed the mark because of either attendance or grades.

Now instead of holding a graduation ceremony on May 25, the Marlin Independent School District decided to move the ceremony to June 30, KWTX reported.

The extension has already had a positive effect on the graduation rate, increasing the number of eligible students to 17 this week, the Tribune-Herald reported.

But the move was not met with open arms.

Parents, grandparents and students who attended a meeting this week said they were not told enough about ineligibility, policy changes this year, course credits not counting and discrepancies in communications. Some seniors told administrators that they feel their class wasn’t a priority, the newspaper reported.

Some families got the call just days before this week’s graduation.

“I get a phone call and he’s like your son will not be graduating,” Victoria Banda told KWTX.

“We have family traveling in from Mexico and if anyone knows it’s not cheap,” she said.

Her son, Salvador Guerro, needed to complete an online test for his history class, but the test won’t be administered until this summer, KWTX reported.

Others who responded on the district’s Facebook post announcing the change didn’t agree with moving the date by more than a month.

One person wrote: “This is COMPLETELY unfair to those 5 who did their work!!” while others also suggested that the students who met the requirements on time graduate as scheduled, and that the remaining students get their certificates mailed to them once the work was completed.