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Graduating high school is a rite of passage that many students look forward to their entire academic careers. The top student of each class is usually chosen as valedictorian and selected to deliver an address during the commencement ceremony. But what happens when there are several students who have similar GPAs and class standings? Well, at one school in Middle Tennessee, they were all chosen as valedictorians.
Rather than elect just one student as valedictorian, Providence Christian Academy in Murfreesboro elected to give 12 different straight-A students the honor as they all have a perfect 4.0 GPA, News Channel 5 reports. The lucky seniors include: Des Henderson, Reese Wrather, Sadie Showalter, Mary Margaret Jones, Mallory Newsome, Lydia Rowland, Kendall Keninitz, Ava Barrett, John Adams, Anderson Reddell, Gray Lynch and Gracie Duke.
"If everyone has achieved that same level of recognition what's the point of whittling that down to one person," said Andy Sheets, assistant head of school.
PCA's graduation ceremony will take place Sunday (May 15). According to the news outlet, this isn't the first time PCA has had multiple valedictorians; however it has never been more than 20% of the class. The 2022 graduating class has 49 students, so this year's valedictorians make up nearly 25%.
"Not all of them had an easy ride these four years, especially coming out of a year of COVID that took them out of school for periods of time," said school counselor Gabby Capurso, "and here at PCA, we did continue that rigor, and coming back from that wasn't easy, but those 12 really pushed through."
The co-valedictorians credited both friendly and academic competition as a reason for the 12 students being recognized for their hard work.
"I think that's how there ended up being twelve of us because we all sort of grab each other's arms and sort of pull each other together," said Henderson.