Redmond High honors 29 graduating valedictorians

Redmond school officials say 29 valedictorians will be graduating on Friday night. A new way grade point averages were measured prompted a policy change, and several students say they’re pleased with the outcome.

“It’s definitely bittersweet,” Lili Wager said Monday as she described graduating high school.

Wagner and Whitney Allen are two of this year’s 29 valedictorians. Wagner finished high school with a 4.4 GPA.

“I think we’re all excited to be honoring as many people as possible, and I think it makes it more special,” said Wagner.

Weighted grades were introduced to the Redmond School district this year, meaning students could potentially reach a 5.0 grade point average, as some classes are given greater weight due to their strenuous requirements.

But the current batch of seniors lived under the old policy for three years.

“There’s a group of students who all had a 4.0, who expected to be valedictorian,” said assistant principal Tony Pupo. “It wasn’t really fair to them to all of a sudden change the policy.”

Allen, who is graduating with a 4.0 GPA, says she was pleasantly surprised.

“Freshman year, I set a goal to be valedictorian, and then my first trimester, I got a B,” said Allen. “So I was like, ‘I’m not going to be.’ But then it worked out, and I was very surprised.”

Nicknamed the “legacy class,” it’s the last group of Redmond seniors graduating together. Half of the younger student body was moved to the new Ridgeview High School last fall.

“All the valedictorians are some of my favorite people in my high school, so it’s just really cool that I get to share it with them,” Allen said.

And no, there will not be 29 speeches. The school left it up to the valedictorians to decide how the process would work. Anyone interested wrote an anonymous speech, and they voted on the top three. One of them was Wagner’s speech.

“I just sat down one afternoon and started writing about our class, and how much I love everyone in Central Oregon, and it just kind of came out,” Wagner said.

This is a one-year policy. Starting next year there will be a single valedictorian and a salutatorian.