Texas school district: Stop retweeting and start studying for final

Those Texas high school students who thought they saw a way out of taking their final art exam by amassing 15,000 retweets will have to take the test after all, school officials said on Friday.

“The art students at Round Rock High School will be taking their final exams at the end of this month,” JoyLynn Occhiuzzi, a spokesperson for the school district stated in an email.

Teacher Cindy House had agreed to cancel the art final if senior Andrew Muennink could get 15,000 retweets of their picture shaking hands in front of a blackboard announcing the deal. According to Corey Ryan, associate director for communications for the Round Rock school district near Austin, Texas, the teacher never thought the retweet plan could succeed.

“She thought it was an unattainable goal, like going to the moon,” Ryan told the Los Angeles Times on Friday. “They didn’t think it would become a national trend. They were just having fun.”

But the campaign continued to pick up steam, approaching 9,000 retweets by Friday, bringing the magic number down from the moon, to the equivalent of a nice safe orbit with a likely successful landing. It also spawned several copy-cat tweets by students trying to get out of their final exams. The school district blamed the media for spreading the story.