By Lee Landor

[Note: This article and its accompanying photos and videos originally appeared on LIHerald.com on June 15, 2011. This content is the rightful property of Richner Communications, Inc.]

This article is the third in a series of nine written throughout the course of a year as part of an investigative series, which won first place for best in-depth series in the New York Press Association’s 2011 Better Newspaper Contest. Read the previous or next articles.

Malverne High School will have only one valedictorian after all.

In response to demands from Malverne and Lakeview residents, the Board of Education reversed a district decision last week to name the high school’s top two students co-valedictorians and name a third student salutatorian.

Instead, Aalique Grahame, who is black, will be this year’s sole valedictorian, and Sarah St. John, who is white, will be the salutatorian. The third-ranking student, Xavier Bernard, will be honored as such and will also speak at graduation.

The board met in emergency executive session on June 16 after residents complained about the district’s decision a day earlier to name Grahame and St. John co-valedictorians — a decision made by Superintendent Dr. James Hunderfund and high school Principal James Brown in response to a calculation error that ranked the top two students incorrectly. The district had initially identified Grahame as the salutatorian, when in fact his 95.42 grade point average is higher than St. John’s, who had been named valedictorian. Instead of switching their titles, Hunderfund and Brown named them co-valedictorians.

That led to widespread anger and racial tension in the community, with residents demanding that the district name Grahame the top student. District officials stood by their decision at first, but it soon became clear that everyone involved — including St. John — believed Grahame should be named valedictorian.

“In light of a highly regrettable mistake, the district exercised what it believed was a compassionate, understanding decision by naming two valedictorians and a new salutatorian …,” Hunderfund said in a statement last Thursday. “But subsequent reaction from the students and families involved in this matter, along with community sentiment relayed to the Board of Education, has compelled the board to change this decision and identify Aalique Grahame as the sole valedictorian.”

Grahame, who said he did not want to share the title, was pleased with the decision. “I thought that they did the right thing because now everyone got what they worked for,” he said. “And I thought they did a good thing by allowing my friend, Xavier, to speak at graduation, since they brought him into the whole situation.”
St. John, 18, whose feelings Hunderfund and Brown had intended to spare, said she was happy that the decision was reversed. “It’s what I wanted from before all this commotion came about,” she said. “It’s based on numbers, and we can’t change numbers. … I felt like I didn’t deserve it, so I didn’t want it.”

Bernard said he was also glad that the district reversed its decision, even if it leaves him without an official title. “The way it is now, they rectified the situation to the best of their ability,” he said. “Everybody got what they wanted, including me. I just wanted fairness.”

Although he wasn’t quite sure yet what he would say during graduation, Bernard was excited to get a speaking part. “Whatever I do talk about, it’s going to be heartwarming,” he said.

Grahame’s aunt and guardian, Dorolyn Montgomery, who was the first to recognize the district’s ranking error, approved of the corrective action. “I’m very pleased that the district decided to do the right thing,” Montgomery said. “It shouldn’t have gotten to this point. They should have checks in place to be checking all this stuff to make sure it’s correct before they put it out there. And I hope they learned something from this.”

Grahame, 17, and Montgomery had their doubts about the district’s ranking system even before it was announced that Grahame was second in the class. “We both had an inkling since last year’s awards ceremony because I got most of the awards — that was for 11th grade,” he said. “And in the beginning of this year, they told me I was number two, so I was a little iffy about it. And at the last awards ceremony — the senior award ceremony — again, I received most of the awards.”

That, Montgomery said, was the “icing on the cake.” She brought the matter to the attention of the Board of Education and district administrators at the board’s June 7 meeting. If she hadn’t, she said, the mistake may never have been discovered.

“I don’t know how an error like this could have been made in the first place,” Montgomery said, “and it was totally going unknown until I recognized it.”

Hunderfund conceded that the error would not have been recognized had it not been for Montgomery’s inquiry. After school officials confirmed the error, they asked for a “recomputation” and then had the district’s accounting firm validate the new numbers.

While the error irked some residents, the administrators’ initial corrective action infuriated others: As with many things in the Malverne school district, the mix-up took on a racial tinge. Many took to Facebook — primarily the page “I Love Malverne But Want More From Our Schools!” — to express their outrage.

“This is a race issue. If it weren’t and it were solely numerical, then Aalique Grahame would have been valedictorian,” wrote Deidra Ramsey McIntyre. “The numbers say he is valedictorian, so, why after the numbers were corrected before graduation, is he being told — not asked — to be co-valedictorian? That smacks of racism alone.”

A number of people disagreed with that claim, saying the district was just trying to be fair and race played no role in the matter. “The problem is that people focus too much on race,” wrote Allison Lyons. “If both were white or black, would we even question human error then? No! They felt bad for already naming the valedictorian so they named both of them.”

Responding to Lyons’s comment, Michael Alexander wrote that attention turns to race “based on the repeated, ongoing slights against a particular group of people.” At the end of the day, he wrote, “Here in this school district, there has and continues to be a continuous oppressive nature towards people of color. How else can you explain the issues?”

One woman explained it as an act of sympathy. “Is Jim Brown a racist because of a compassionate decision to not humiliate a student by yanking the award away after she was told months ago that she was valedictorian?” wrote Jeanne D’Esposito. “You can disagree with the ‘solution’ of co-valedictorians (which is not uncommon, by the way) and Aalique and his family are fully within their rights to argue that he should have the title alone … But saying the decision is racist has no basis in fact, and it is divisive and destructive.”

The Facebook debate continued long after the board had reversed the rankings. While he said he is paying no mind to the continuing back-and-forth, Grahame did request that the district recalculate the rankings for the entire graduating class. “If my grades were messed up, then most likely the entire class’s grades were messed up,” he said. “So you have to be fair to everyone.”

Hunderfund said the district is considering the request, but, so close to graduation, there is not much point in revisiting the matter.

While Grahame awaits a response, he is focused on writing his graduation speech, which will not mention the controversy. “I’m trying to speak about continuing to work hard, never giving up and continuing to prove yourself,” he said.

Read the previous article in the series: ‘It’s always been a black-and-white issue”
Read the following article in the series: ‘View from across the Ocean’