Texas school misspells own name for nine years

An elementary school in Fort Worth, Texas was recently forced to give itself a failing grade after realizing it had misspelled its own name for the past nine years.

During the 2003-2004 school year, Sunrise Elementary School attempted to honor the first teacher ever hired at the school, Mrs. Mary McMillan, by adding "McMillan" to the title. But recently, one of McMillan's relatives contacted the school to tell them that they had included an extra "i," spelling it "Sunrise-McMillian Elementary School."

They had spelled it wrong everywhere: school signs, banners, logos, letterhead, their website and Facebook.

On Monday, the lettering on the school's building was changed, according to the NBC's Dallas-Fort Worth affiliate. Most of the misspellings on its website have been corrected, but graphics and logos still use the old spelling and banners hanging at the school are incorrect. Even the website's address will have to be changed.

"Our day-to-day things that we just take for granted now and, as we're coming up with it, we're seeing 'OK, that's something else we need to fix," Principal Marion Mouton explained.

As of Tuesday, the student body had not been told about the mix-up, but the school hopes to use it as a teachable moment once enough of the misspellings are fixed.

Teacher Jouet Dotson has already been brainstorming on how to teach the new spelling to her students.

"You know how we say there's no 'i' in team?" Dotson suggested. "We could say, 'Well, [at] Sunrise-McMillan, we're a team, so there is no 'i' in the last part of McMillan.'"

Watch this video from NBCDFW.com, broadcast May 8, 2012.

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