County High School Diplomas Include Misspelling

Hot on the heels of the Scripps National Spelling Bee held last week in Oxon Hill comes an epic spelling gaffe out of Prince George’s County Public Schools. 

The diplomas of 8,000 PGCPS high school seniors contain a blatant spelling error, misspelling the word “program” as “progam,” omitting the second “r.”

Lynn Bryant’s daughter, Heather, graduated from  in Upper Marlboro about two weeks ago. Bryant's daughter brought the error to her attention after her friend noticed it last Thursday.

The rest of Heather’s friends, also recent Douglass grads, checked their diplomas and all found the same spelling error.

“That’s kind of embarrassing,” Bryant said.

When called for comment, Frederick Douglass Principal Rudolph Saunders said he was unaware of the diploma misspelling.

Patch also received an email from Vickie Walker of Bowie, whose son John graduated from last week, reporting that “program” was also misspelled on her son’s diploma.

Prince George's Public Schools Communications Director Briant Coleman confirmed Wednesday that the misspelling, which appeared on all county high school diplomas, was the result of a vendor error. He also said PGCPS became aware of the misspelling sometime last week, and that all students and parents have been notified of the error.

However, parents of PGCPS graduates have commented on this article that they have yet to receive any notification of the misspelling, or information on new diplomas being issued.

The vendor, National Quality Products, located in Fairfax, VA, will pay for the reprinting of the diplomas and students should receive them in about six weeks, according to an apology letter issued by the vendor to PGCPS. PGCPS will only incur the cost of mailing them to students.

According to the bid letter issued by PGCPS to National Quality Products awarding them the diploma printing contract, the approximate cost of printing misspelled diplomas was $22,337.50.

This post was updated.