Altering son’s test results and then denying it gave school district just cause for dismissal: Board
A British Columbia school district had just cause to fire a high school office worker who tampered with her son’s test results, the B.C. Arbitration Board has ruled.
The employee was one of three support staff in the Duncan, B.C., high school’s office. She prepared report cards, performed data entry and ran answer sheets from class tests through a machine that calculated the results. The answer sheets featured circles which students filled in according to their choice for each multiple choice question, which the machine scanned and tabulated. The employee’s computer was the only one in the office with the software to operate the machine so she looked after the scanning and compiled the reports.
The employee was hired in 2008. Her son began attending the school as a student for the 2009/10 school year in an advanced program with math, science, social studies and English. The son was a good student but put a lot of stress on himself. The employee was concerned about his stress levels and emailed his teachers on Jan. 14, 2010, saying he was overwhelmed and she was trying to help him out.
Test answer sheet altered
On April 13, 2010, the son’s math class was given the first part of a two-part test. After the test was completed, the math teacher glanced through a few of the sheets to get an idea of how the test went. The employee’s son’s sheet was on top of the pile and the teacher estimated the son scored about 16 or 17 out of 25. He locked the sheets in a cabinet until the next morning, when he took them to the employee to be scanned and tabulated.
When the math teacher received the report from the employee, he was surprised to see her son scored 20 out of 25. He discussed it with the science teacher, who was running a test that day. The science teacher decided to photocopy the answer sheet of the administrator’s son before submitting it for scanning.
The next day, April 15, the answer sheets for the science test were scanned and returned to the science teacher. Upon comparing the son’s sheet with the photocopy, the teacher found the score had improved by 11.
That same day, the second part of the math test was given. The math teacher also photocopied the son’s answer sheet before submitting the sheets to the employee. When he came to the office, the employee was talking to another teacher, so he left the sheets on her desk. When he came back an hour later, the sheets hadn’t been scanned yet, but he looked at the son’s sheet and saw four answers had been changed from the original.
A meeting was held on April 19, 2010, with the principal and the son’s teachers. The social sciences teacher was instructed to photocopy the answer sheets of the entire class — in which the son was a student — before submitting them to be scanned. When she picked up the sheets the next morning, the son’s sheet had been changed.
After getting written statements from the teachers, the principal decided to send the employee home with pay pending an investigation. She was given a letter explaining the allegations and an independent investigator was hired.
The investigator interviewed the teachers, staff, the principal and the employee and reviewed the answer sheets, the son’s grades and other documents. He concluded that it was likely the employee altered the answer sheets to give her son better grades.
At a termination meeting on May 25, the employee denied the allegations and she claimed someone else could have altered the sheets while they were on her desk. The union also complained the investigation focused only on the employee without considering the possibility someone else could have done it and the school shouldn’t have relied on the report as cause for dismissal.
The arbitration board found the investigation was carefully and fairly conducted, though the final report mixed in facts and the investigator’s opinion. However, it also found the school didn’t base the termination on the report but rather on the evidence it already had: The altered answer sheets.
The board agreed with the union that it was easy to alter the answer sheets and the office was often full of people. However, the window of opportunity to change each test was limited and only the employee had the opportunity on all occasions.
The first math test was altered shortly before a staff meeting that occupied the rest of the staff. The second was altered in a one-hour time period during which the employee was at her desk. For the social studies test, it would have been difficult for someone to have altered the son’s sheet at the administrator’s desk without being noticed before the report was picked up first thing in the morning, said the board.
