Credit Requirements Lowered for Outgoing Brea Olinda Seniors

Two days before graduation, the Brea Olinda Unified School District reduced the number of credits it requires for a high school diploma so that 55 seniors could graduate on time Wednesday.

The students at Brea Olinda High School were at risk of not graduating as a result of a grade-changing scandal in which, among other things, some students received double credit for taking the same course, school officials acknowledged Friday.

At a meeting this week, the school board announced that it would immediately reduce the district’s graduation requirements for this year so none of the seniors involved would be held back. Although those 55 seniors graduated Wednesday with fewer than the 240 credits long required by the district, they all had more than the 200 credits required by the state, officials said.

But dozens of sophomores and juniors who had also received double credit had their transcripts corrected and may have to attend summer school in order to graduate on time with 240 credits, which the district will again require next year.

Brea Olinda Principal John Johnson sent a letter home to all senior parents June 10--before the school board announced its decision to reduce graduation requirements--assuring them that transcript problems would not affect impending commencement.

“We have discovered some inconsistencies in student transcripts,” Johnson said in the letter, according to school board members. “It is imperative for you to know that these problems will not affect senior graduation status, college transcripts, college entrance requirements or scholarships.”

Meanwhile, Supt. Edgar Z. Seal of the Brea Olinda Unified School District acknowledged Friday that he had known since February of last fall’s grade changes at Brea Olinda High, but took months to report the matter to the district’s trustees because original grades had already been restored.

Seal also said that the incident “has been blown totally out of proportion” by news reporters whom he said are trying to fix blame for a matter that he and other school officials consider closed.

“No one really thought they were breaking the law. . . . It would serve no purpose to determine who is responsible,” said Seal, who this year was named Orange County Superintendent of the Year.

Earlier this week, it was revealed that former Brea Olinda counselors last fall changed some 360 of the previous year’s letter grades to “pass” notations, violating state law in an effort to boost student grade-point averages.

In addition, administrators discovered that scores of students had received double credit by taking the same courses twice under different titles.

One girl who will be a junior in the fall said that a counselor advised her to repeat an algebra class in which she got a C so she could post a better mark. The girl repeated the course, and discovered this week that her C was changed to a pass.

“Now, I’m screwed and a lot of other kids are, too,” said the 15-year-old girl, who will need to take another math class to replace the one she took twice. “They really cheated the students. They made the mistakes and we have to suffer. What about them?”

Seal said he plans no disciplinary action, but school board members said they are waiting for a more thorough investigation before deciding whether to punish any employees.

“This whole thing is a slap in the face to teachers at Brea Olinda High School and to the teaching profession in general and it’s really a travesty,” Trustee Todd A. Spitzer said Friday.

The administrators “should have been honest, forthright and truthful from the very beginning,” Spitzer added. “I was furious. . . . It is (the school board’s) responsibility to make decisions about any improprieties, and to tell us two weeks before graduation put us in a bind.”

Trustee Barbara R. Paxton and School Board President Susie Sokol, however, said Seal acted responsibly.

“I think (Seal) thought the problem was taken care of and that it wasn’t a deliberate action,” Sokol said.

Added Paxton: “It’s (Seal’s) job to handle these kinds of issues within the district.”

Regardless of what the school board decides, Principal Johnson and former counselor Geraldine Gordon could face discipline from the state Commission on Teacher Credentialing, because a teacher filed a complaint against them with the commission last week.

A spokeswoman for the commission said Friday that it typically takes six months to investigate and adjudicate complaints; if educators are found to have broken laws, the commission can reprimand them, or suspend or revoke their credentials.

Seal’s statement Friday that he knew of the situation in February is the first indication that top school district officials knew of the grade switching for months before informing the school board on May 20, when board members learned that the local teachers union had filed a grievance over the grades.

Seal said Johnson told him last fall about transcript problems such as incorrect course names and students taking the same courses twice, but that he first heard about grades being illegally changed from letter grades to pass notations in February when he met with Johnson and then-registrar Joanne Rizuto.

He said he took no action at that point because he “didn’t know the magnitude of the problem.”

Johnson “mentioned some things, but I don’t know what it was he mentioned at the time (last fall). I didn’t know anything about these grades until February,” Seal said. “By then, they’d all been changed back anyway. . . . It was a dead issue.”

Johnson did not return repeated phone calls Friday.

Seal blamed the problem on the school’s lack of a clearly stated policy regarding the pass/fail option. Starting in 1985, he said, students in advanced math classes were allowed to choose pass/fail rather than traditional letter grades, if their parents, teachers and counselors approved it.

Somehow, Seal said, the practice ballooned, and expanded to other academic courses besides math. Then, this fall, counselors changed hundreds of grades from the previous year without teachers’ permission, violating the state’s education code.

“There was nothing ever written down, that’s the problem,” said Seal, who is retiring next month. “We will have a (new) policy and it will be very restrictive. Everybody will know the ball game, how it’s going to be played and the rules of it.”

Seal said the policy will likely be in place within a month.