LA Times - An Eagle Rock couple is considering filing a lawsuit against the Los Angeles Unified School District after their daughter, who earned straight A’s and had a 4.50 GPA, was denied the honor of valedictorian and had to settle for salutatorian, her family says. Elisha Marquez has been accepted to Ivy League schools and is on her way to Stanford in the fall. The 18-year-old has already nabbed an engineering internship at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and earned a scholarship through the Gates Millennium Scholars program.But according to Eagle Rock Patch, she had only a 4.50 weighted GPA after the first semester of her senior year, one notch below Eagle Rock High’s Jasmine Fernandez, who managed a 4.55. Consequently, Fernandez stood as the 3,000-student school’s valedictorian Wednesday, and Marquez had to settle for salutatorian, according to Elisha’s father, Nelson. And to Elisha’s mother, Carol, the second-place finish means that her daughter’s “sleepless nights” were essentially “for nothing.””It’s flawed. It’s wrong,” Carol told The Times. “All her hard work is not being recognized. All she had was straight A’s. Not a B, ever.”

District officials did not immediately respond to an inquiry from The Times, but a spokesman for the district told Patch it has been LAUSD’s policy since 2004 to have a cutoff date for all valedictorian GPA calculations. Eagle Rock High Principal Salvador Velasco also told the news site that Elisha could have taken more AP classes in 10th and 11th grade to make up for any missed opportunities as a freshman.

. “You don’t want your kid to be a loser. That’s what they’re basically saying. Be a loser.“It’s not my mistake,” he added. “It’s [the district’s] mistake. At the end of the day the grades speak for themselves.”


I don’t even understand what we’re talking about here?   Your fucking kid lost fair and square. She came in 2nd like a chump.   The other girl had a higher GPA plain and simple.  She took harder classes and the computers reflected that.  You don’t need no internship at the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab to figure that out.   It’s not rocket science.   It’s no different than the BCS.   Don’t schedule non conference cupcakes if you want to win in the polls.  Everybody knows that.  Strength of schedule matters in college football and GPA’s.    You were the Salutatorian winner…. AKA 1st loser.    Deal with it sister.