The school got a stack of certificates. They sat on the principals desk for a while, then they sat with the guidance counselor or homeroom teachers before being passed out.
The parent is basically complaining because:
1. They didn’t notify the parents via email.
2. They didn’t find out in time to put in on an college early admission application.
3. The school didn’t make a big deal of handing out the awards in an assembly or similar.
This sounds more like a complaint from an overbearing helicopter parent than any sort of issue that HN would care about.
"One former student said he learned he had won the award through a random email from the school to a school-district email account that students rarely check; the principal neither told his parents nor made a public announcement."
I have a lot of sympathy for school administrators and school board members. They deal with this sort of stuff from parents all the time.