Grade Scandal Blamed on Confusion

Massive confusion about policies and job responsibilities plagued Brea Olinda High School during the time when hundreds of student grades were illegally changed, but no employee willfully broke the law, according to a new report.

Ronald Wenkart and Val Fadely, attorneys for the Orange County Department of Education who were asked to investigate the transcript-tampering scandal, suggested in their report to the school board Monday night that it draft clear policies and job descriptions.

“There was a great deal of confusion, misunderstanding and miscommunication,” Fadely told the board. “There was a lack of policies and a lack of consensus about what district practices were.”

Despite about 75 hours of interviews with 26 current and former district employees, many questions remain, in part because many employees offered conflicting explanations about the situation, said the attorneys, who were peppered with questions from school board members.

“We got a lot of different answers when we asked questions,” Wenkart said. “This is much more complicated than we thought when we got into it.

“I think you need to decide which decisions should be made at the school level and by whom, which decisions should be made at the district office and which decisions should be made by the board. That’s an issue you need to grapple with.”

In a closed session, school board members discussed whether to discipline any employees involved in the grade changing but did not reach a conclusion. Supt. Peggy Lynch said the trustees need time to review the 27-page, single-spaced report. Some board members have previously said they would consider firing employees because of the scandal.

“We still have some problems to wrestle with regarding personnel,” board President Susie D. Sokol said at the end of Monday’s open meeting.

An audit of the school’s records this summer showed about 600 transcript changes, affecting nearly 300 students in the classes of 1994, 1995 and 1996.

Hundreds of course titles were changed, letter grades were illegally switched to “pass” notations and scores of students received double credit when they repeated courses in which they received poor grades.

The school board voted upon learning of the transcript changes in May to correct the record and immediately lower the district graduation requirements to the state’s minimum so no students would be held back.

In their report, the attorneys said the practice of giving “pass” notations dates back to 1978-79 but has spun out of control over the past several years.

Board members and the attorneys on Monday attributed part of the problem to major turnover in counseling and administrative staff at the high school and to glitches in the computer software program used to record grades. The attorneys recommended training employees to use school computer software.

Some trustees and teachers, however, were not satisfied with that explanation.

“If everybody was aware that changing grades was not appropriate, and it was still done, why did it happen?” Trustee Bernie Kilcoyne asked in an interview after the meeting. “In my opinion, this shouldn’t have happened.”

Donna Burgard, a longtime Spanish teacher at the school, was one of several people steaming in the crowd as the attorneys presented their report.

“I think it was whitewash,” Burgard said after the meeting. “I’m angry that they would say that this was all accident. . . . I’m so mad, I hope the board has the gumption to take care of the source.”

Administrators have previously said a former counselor and former registrar were responsible for the bulk of the changes, but trustee Todd Spitzer said Monday night that the attorneys’ full report indicates the entire counseling staff at times changed grades and course titles on the computer.

Spitzer, and several school staff members in the audience, expressed outrage that the school board was not notified of the situation until a teacher filed a grievance last May. Principal Don Johnson learned of the grade changing as early as July, 1993, and discussed it with about a half-dozen staff members throughout the year.

“If this was nothing that wrong or bad, then why didn’t anybody just come to us?” Spitzer said during the meting. “It’s completely common sense, anybody who ever went to school knows you don’t change teachers’ grades, right?”

According to the California Education Code, teachers must be notified if grades are to be changed. Administrators can only change grades in case of clerical error, fraud, bad faith or incompetence.

Spitzer, who has been outspoken regarding the grade changes, said he was dissatisfied with attorneys’ report and asked for full transcripts of the interviews.

“In every category, everybody’s pointing at everybody else,” he said angrily. “There’s complete contradiction here.”

Among the attorneys’ recommendations were to develop an atmosphere in which school employees feel comfortable telling superiors about problems.

Sally Tennison and Joanne Rizuto, two former employees who blew the whistle on the scandal, were among many in the crowd upset that district officials were not told when the grade changes were first discovered.