On Wednesday May 27th the 8th graders at Standard Middle School will take part in a graduation ceremony. But Sharon Diaz's son, Andy Oviedo, isn't allowed to participate.

Diaz says she got a letter 5 days ago explaining why; that Oviedo's grade point average was too low and he had 30 or more absences. But Diaz says there's a reason why her son's grades weren't up to par.

Oviedo has been in special education classes throughout his entire school career, but that changed for the last quarter of school. "[The school evaluates] him periodically to see how he's doing," she explained. "They decided to put him in general ed, because they said he was doing too good to stay in special ed."

So for his last quarter of eighth grade, Oviedo had an entire schedule of regular classes. Diaz says her son began struggling right away. "I brought it to the school's attention, because he would complain and say he can't do the work, that it's too hard," said Diaz.

She adds that she wasn't the only one trying to alert the school to the problem. "(My son) would tell his teacher's, 'It's too much.' They say, 'You can do it, you're just not trying.''"

So Oviedo stayed in the regular classes and his grades drastically suffered. Diaz is holding the school responsible since they were the one's who recommended her son be removed from the special education classes in the first place. "They should have been noticing that he was failing instead of waiting until the last couple of weeks before graduation to decide he wasn't going to graduate because his GPA's too low," she said.

But the story gets stranger, even though Oviedo's not taking part in the 8th grade graduation because of his low GPA, he's still moving on to the 9th grade.

Eyewitness News asked Standard School District Superintedent, Dr. Kevin Silberberg, why Oviedo was kept in the regular classes and not moved back to the special education classes when his grades began to fall. Dr. Silberberg told us the school claims that they wanted to keep Oviedo in the Special Education classes and that it was Diaz who wanted her son moved to the regular courses.

Diaz says that's not true.

Regardless of who is responsible for the decision, Diaz is worried about her son's future. "If he can't do 8th grade, how's he going to do 9th grade?" She wondered. "Now, I have to worry about him wanting to drop out, because he can't do the work."

Dr. Silberberg adds that school's have a very strict policy when it comes to the 8th grade graduation requirements. So despite the reason why, if the student has a low GPA and poor attendance he or she cannot graduate.