NY school official accused of changing grades

NEW ROCHELLE, N.Y. (FOX 5 NY) - New Rochelle High School is facing yet another scandal. This time, an administrator is accused of tampering with grades.

"We take this very seriously—any tampering with grades is serious," Dr. Magda Parvey, the interim superintendent, said. "So that is why we had an investigation done to get to the bottom of what exactly happened."

A report by T & M Protection Resources, an independent investigation company, found credible evidence showing that during the 2017–2018 school year, New Rochelle's High School's house principal Shadia Alvarez entered and changed existing student grades without taking into consideration the quality of their work.

Parvey said the district has begun the procedure to terminate the probationary period for Alvarez, an administrator for the school's credit recovery program, which lets students who have failed a class retake the course online.

Alvarez manipulated the entries of more than 200 grades for 32 students. The entries were made for students who had graduated and those who were scheduled to graduate in 2018.

T & M said that two students slated to graduate this past summer would not have received passing grades in their online courses if Alvarez hadn't changed them.

"Their graduation is legitimate and the report was inconclusive regarding that," Parvey said.

In a statement, New Rochelle Board of Education President Jeffrey Hastie said, "The systemic failure identified in the report is not tolerated."

The board will be having a meeting on Jan. 8 when it will determine whether to terminate Alvarez.