Rio Grande HS student involved in valedictorian mix-up
By Julian Paras
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ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (KOAT) — As the summer nears, and graduates look to their next chapters, one local students is reflecting on all he has achieved in high school.
“To everyone else, it’s still a really big accomplishment and fun, but I would have liked to have been wearing the valedictorian one,” Andrew Salas said.
And he did for a moment. The Rio Grande senior graduated top 10 in his class with accomplishments in AP physics, AP human geography, and AP pre-calculus, to name a few. Shortly after the announcement from the school, his family received a call.
“A couple days later, I got a call saying that I was no longer valedictorian and was instead salutatorian,” Salas said.
The Albuquerque Public School official responded to the family following this incident after a “miscalculation” was made. The family received an email from the assistant superintendent of the high school, Marco Harris.
In part, it said, “A misstep in our verification process led to the premature announcement, and the error was only identified after a subsequent review.”
The APS director of communications sent KOAT a statement saying, “Another student had a higher GPA and earned the title of valedictorian at Rio Grande High. While it’s true that the school released an unofficial class ranking last week. It’s my understanding that the school made it clear the rankings still needed to be verified.”
Salas said, “I understand that it’s a mistake and want to fix it for other students, which I’m happy for, but still, at the same time, it doesn’t fix or solve what happened to me.”
Salas told KOAT this has been far from an easy experience. APS says moving forward they will undergo a multi-layer review process to ensure complete accuracy before any formal announcements are made.
For Salas, he’s learning to move forward as well.
“You got to be able to adapt and not everything is given or always comes the way you expect it,” Salas said. “You always got to have a backup plan and be ready for kind of anything.”
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