Clark County School District has officially announced that they are instating a GPA cap for the class of 2025. The new rule will cap student’s GPAs at 4.95, which is very likely to result in upwards of 20 people tied for Valedictorian.  The school board backs their decision with the idea that the Valedictorian race creates a stressful and competitive atmosphere that causes many students to overload themselves with advanced classes, which is harmful to students’ health. Their decision is also based on the lack of equity involved with paying for advanced classes. 

In the past, CCSD always had a GPA cap of 4.85. It was removed a couple of years ago, but now they’re bringing it back.

“I think that their reason for bringing the cap back has to do with equity,” says Lisa Hebb, counselor.  “As you know, many of the classes that students can earn bonus points are AP and Dual Enrollment.  And those classes have fees associated with them. In order to make it equitable for all students to reach the status of val/sal, bringing back the cap makes it more “fair”. Students who cannot afford to take those classes would be at a disadvantage. Additionally, I think there were concerns of over-competitive environments in schools when students were pitting against one another to see who can take the most classes in order to achieve the highest GPA and get the accolades.”

Despite this, many students find the GPA cap unfair, saying that it undermines many students’ hard work and defeats the purpose of having a Valedictorian altogether. 

“I think the GPA cap is the wrong move,” says Katelyn Fisk, a junior in the running for Valedictorian. “They said the reason was to not stress kids out, because if there’s no GPA cap then kids aren’t going to take more classes than they can handle to try to be Valedictorian or whatever. But, in reality, as someone who is a candidate for Valedictorian, I’m going to take these classes no matter what because that’s just the next step in my learning process. The GPA cap isn’t going to do anything but frustrate me because I feel like all of this work that I’ve done is for me, and I receive that reward, but I don’t get the actual recognition that comes from being the only Valedictorian rather than one of seven or something.”

The cap will definitely change the way that CCSD acknowledges and celebrates Valedictorians, since there will be so many of them.

“Now that we have a cap back, there is a large possibility that each graduating class will have multiple valedictorians and salutatorians,” says Hebb.” Prior to the cap removal, we would often have many students (traditionally double digits) who meet the requirement and represent the class as vals and sals. This means we as a school will have to be creative about how to honor these students since it might not be feasible to have all of them give a speech at graduation – which is typically a role the val and sal would fulfill.”