Parents Upset Teens Not Graduating Next Week

(Memphis)  It’s not the kind of news that you want to hear at the last minute.

 ”They are not going to graduate in July,” said Mom Nicole Triplett.

Students, like Keira Sanders, found out Thursday that their big plans for high school graduation are going to have to wait,.

“I feel like I wasted my time,” said Sanders, who is a senior at Northeast Prep Academy. “I went to Summer school for nothing.”

“I have been to prom. We have paid for cap and gown, we have sent out invitations and nothing is going to take place.”

Triplett said her daughter was supposed to graduate next Friday, but today, school officials at North East Prepatory Academy told her a different story.

She is one of more than a dozen parents who found out that the electives their children took in school, are not going to cut it.

“Some of those students do not have the elective focus to meet the State requirements,” said Randy McPherson, director of counseling and college prep for Memphis City Schools.

The State now requires high school students to take electives in one focused area of study, like math and science, but Keira took classes in random courses, like algebra, world history, and English.

This means she’s going to have to stick around high school another semester to take her electives again.

This new State requirement applies to all seniors who became freshman in 2009 or later.

“So she is staying up day and night trying to get all this done because she is trying to graduate and now the week before graduation you say they can’t because of something you all didn’t tell us about?,” said another concerned mom, Jemeya Jefferson.

 Memphis City Schools admits that there may have been a breakdown in communication.

“Possibly the communication process hasn’t been as effective as it should have been,” said McPherson.

Memphis City Schools says the 30 students who will not be graduating like they thought  were all in accelerated programs anyway, meaning they were going to graduate early.

Now it says they’ll be graduating with the rest of their class.