Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Ex-Boca High principal demoted, let kids audit classes to protect grades
Geoff McKee, a popular former principal of Boca Raton High School, has been demoted for allowing dozens of ambitious students to take classes that did not count toward their highly coveted class ranks.
The arrangement offered the students the chance to maintain their place among the top students in the school while letting them take classes that would have lowered their grade-point averages, such as yearbook or band. Such courses would lower their class ranks because they are not college level and therefore do not offer increased points toward their GPAs.
The classes remained on their transcripts so it appeared to colleges that they were taking a full and diverse course load.
The district said 29 students benefited from this system and McKee, who led the school from 2003 to 2016, did not make it widely known to the rest of the student body. McKee said the policy was in most editions of the student handbook.
McKee had been promoted to instructional superintendent in 2016, but will now work as a transportation manager. He had been temporarily assigned to this job as his case was investigated. His $142,000 salary will be reduced to $125,605 beginning July 1.
“I will always cherish the 13 years I served as the Boca High principal,” McKee said Friday. “I respect the superintendent’s authority to transfer me, and I am thankful to serve as manager of transportation customer support.”
It’s the second school district censure for McKee.
In 2016, former Superintendent Robert Avossa reprimanded him for proposing to his girlfriend on the Boca High football field in 2014.
Avossa said McKee hadn’t submitted the proper paperwork to use the field for personal purposes.
In that incident, he was cleared of a more serious allegation, having an inappropriate relationship with a subordinate.
The woman he proposed to used to teach at Boca High, but the two said their relationship started after she moved to another school. They later got married but have since divorced.
During his tenure at Boca High, McKee grew the student body from 1,700 students to 3,300 and built up the number of collegelevel courses offered from 15 to 57. The school transformed from a low-performing, undesirable destination to an academic powerhouse, and has been consistently A-rated by the state.
Competition escalated to be ranked in the school’s top 10.
The most ambitious students took as many as six Advanced Placement or other college-level classes in a year and achieved As in all of them. An A in a college-level class offers six points toward a GPA, while an A in a regular class offers only four, creating a disincentive to take classes that aren’t college-level, such as drama or school leadership.
McKee said principals at the time were encouraged to be creative, so he allowed students to audit these classes so they could enjoy an assortment of learning experiences and maintain their super-high GPAs.
Last year, a high-ranking Boca High student sued the school district because the principal who replaced McKee was not honoring the auditing arrangement.
The student, president of the school’s Student Government Association, took a leadership class that he had been told would not count toward his weighted GPA, and the student had relied upon that “contract” so he could maintain his perfect GPA.
That’s when McKee became the focus of the Boca High investigation.
The student’s father, Frank Chapman, said Friday that McKee was a good principal and he wishes the school system would change its system of “penalizing students for extracurriculars.”
“This has been an issue for kids in Palm Beach County for years,” Chapman said. “The whole purpose of the suit was to prevent this from happening to other kids.”
His son, John, is co-valedictorian this year and is headed to Stanford University.
“I will always cherish the 13 years I served as the Boca High principal.” Geoff McKee