Salazar claims that after he had told Kesha on May 27 that she had earned the highest grade over her 4-year stay at Compre, another student had checked on her grades. He said that it was during this process that the school determined that science student Hui Lan Li, known as Helen Li, had earned the highest grade and so was to be the valedictorian.

Who is to blame for the error? Salazar said that an office secretary, who, he said, is currently in Guatemala seeking medical attention for her child, made the error, and while he acknowledges that the school?s system of calculating grades is imperfect and tedious, he said that the worker would be held accountable for her error and called in for a sit-down with the board, which would decide if and in what manner she would be reprimanded.

At first, the tabulations showed Kesha with an 85.87 average, and Li close behind with 85.69, Salazar said. He added, though, that Li?s first-term average was more than twenty points higher than the figure that had been used in the tabulation, and her true average was more than 90%, though he could not give us an exact figure.

One teacher of the school remarked that really, it is a situation in which no one wins, since the school has again gotten a bad name for making an avoidable mistake with final grades. But what could prove even more controversial are claims that neither of the two students in question, Peyrefitte nor Li, had really gotten the highest overall average.

Amandala understands that even as late as today, some had been challenging the school?s decision to name Li the valedictorian, and claim that Chai-Hung (David) Hsu, another science student, had earned the top honor.

Salazar told us that Hsu?s average would have been 88.20. He said that this would have placed him second, even though his grade had been reduced to 30% in one subject as punishment for an alleged misdemeanor. According to Salazar, Hsu?s parents had agreed that in light of the alleged misdemeanor, he would not lay claim to any of the awards that would be bestowed to high-scoring candidates upon graduation.

Interestingly, last year there was a similar confusion over who would be the valedictorian and the salutatorian, after the school found that it had made an error in the calculation of final grades. It had to make the valedictorian the salutatorian, and the salutatorian the valedictorian, Salazar explained.

He told us that the school had promised last year that there would not be a repeat of such errors, and he lamented that the error had occurred a second consecutive time.

Asked what system the school uses to record and tabulate grades, the principal told us that yearly averages aren?t recorded on student reports. Averages are tabulated?and tabulated manually?at the end of the 4thyear, after all grades are submitted, to determine who are the top scorers. He said that it took months for the process to be completed, as the school has not computerized its student records, but plans to do so in the future.

When we questioned whether he was sure that there were no other mistakes in tabulating the final grades, he could not guarantee this.

Kesha, her relatives and even some teachers have expressed both shock and dismay about what had happened. Kesha?s Camalote community was particularly hurt and felt that their luminary had been discriminated against because of color and her place of origin, though Salazar rebutted the claims, saying that he does not condone such discrimination.

Proud of Kesha?s accomplishment, which had not been previously earned by anyone in the village, those from her community had even paraded with her and lauded her public accolades.

There are many, including students, parents and teachers, who say that not only was the mistake intolerable, but that perhaps some other means could have been used to remedy the situation, instead of demoting Kesha from valedictorian to salutatorian. Since Kesha had been preparing and practicing her speech for weeks, the school could have opted to have two valedictorians, some suggested.

Those who tell us about Li explain that she is not a well-off Taiwanese, as some think. They say that she comes from a meek background, having worked hard as a teen selling vegetables for her mother after school. However, she is now in the care of foster parents in Belmopan, we are told.

For his part, Salazar maintains that he had done the correct thing to make Li the valedictorian, since, he said, Li is of humble roots and had worked really hard to earn it. He denied claims that he was discriminating against Kesha because of her ethnicity and where she comes from. Kesha is a proud teenager from Camalote, Cayo, described as a Creole village.

In her address, Kesha writes: ?As a young Belizean from a rural community, I, like many of my colleagues, faced additional challenges over the past four years. The first challenge a rural student must face is that of fitting in and demanding respect from so-called urban students. Some words that stand out in my mind include ?bushy,? ?primitive? and ?uncivilized.? However, I dare say, that it is not where we come from that matters, but where we are heading in life.?

Kesha did earn first place in clothing and textiles, literature, history and information technology, and we understand that she ranked top in her class.

According to Salazar, the school will tonight present awards to each student who placed first and second in all six 4thform classes.

Diane Gomez, a business student with an 82.8 average, was selected to present the vote of thanks for placing third in the graduating class.