Zenaida Cuerdo said her daughter Jonavelle met all the qualifications indicated in the Board of Education Policy and in the Official Hopwood Handbook for Class 2009-2010.
But PSS Hearing Officer Vince Dela Cruz, Chacha Oceanview Jr. High School principal, found “no error on the part of the school administration with regards to the educational record of the student.”
In a decision dated Oct. 5, Dela Cruz said the GPA of the student was not affected by the calculations made by Hopwood.
“The class ranking is a substantive matter that falls squarely within the boundaries of applicable BOE policy,” he said.
On Oct. 7, Cuerdo filed an appeal with the Board of Education.
She told Variety on Wednesday that if the board fails to address her concerns, she will submit an appeal to the U.S. Department of Education’s Family Policy Compliance Office.
Cuerdo said if the case is resolved, she would request that all corrected transcripts and other education records be forwarded to Marianas High School, where her daughter is now studying.
She claimed there were violations of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, or FERPA, which she encountered, such as delays in the response to her request to access and to correct or amend education records, the failure to provide an impartial hearing officer and the failure to respond to the request to access other education records.
Cuerdo was hoping that the visiting U.S education official, Dr. Carl E. Harris, could look into her child’s case.
Cuerdo filed a complaint on June16, a day after the promotion ceremony.
She said the school introduced additional criteria to calculate the class rankings for the purpose of awarding special awards.
“There was no written additional criteria memorandum issued to parents, students, homeroom teachers, vice principals on the exit test, essay/speech competition and leadership points criteria,” she said, adding that this was confirmed in her discussions with the vice principals, teachers, parents and students.
On June 21, she informed PSS about the “error” in the GPA computations because of the “wrong” total number of credits earned.
The PSS hearing officer, however, said the decision to add new criteria was covered by BOE regulations which stated: “each school may establish additional written criteria for the selection of graduation and special awards recipients. Schools may refuse to offer awards to qualified students for disciplinary reasons.”
Dela Cruz said the school afforded the opportunity to all top 34 students to participate in the speech and essay contests which determined the special awards.
“By doing this, the school was fair and impartial in determining class ranking for the purposes of special awards.
There was no error in that computation that led to the student being ranked for the purposes of awarding special awards at the HJHS promotional ceremony,” he added.
Cuerdo said the students were “subjected to extraneous materials (obsolete and not learned in the courses for junior high and not in accord with the CNMI PSS Curriculum and Benchmarks) after the determination of who were the top deserving students per BOE policy and HJHS Handbook.”
She said the students’ grades or academic records were affected by opinions or views that were unrelated to a courses’ subject matter, adding that this was a violation of the students’ “academic rights.”
She said the academic class rankings of the HJHS students based on the BOE & HJHS Handbooks were “messed up” by the exit test, the administration and staff’s views and opinions on the essay and speech competitions and the leadership percentage.
Cuerdo said she will also challenge the content of the exit test.
