St. Louis student leaves school, but still gets B's and C's

ST. LOUIS -- A public school student here got mixed marks in a third-quarter progress report recently, receiving credit for being in class 58 times and getting two B's and one C to go along with four F's.

There was just one problem: The entire time, the unidentified student was enrolled in a school in Oklahoma, attending classes hundreds of miles from St. Louis.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported Sunday that teachers at Gateway High School never noticed the student wasn't in class during the first two months of this year. In fact, one teacher marked the student tardy for class on a day the student wasn't there.

Senior district officials were unaware of the phantom student until the Post-Dispatch provided a copy of an e-mail the school's vice principal sent to Gateway staff chastising them for failing to notice the absence of the student.

The student withdrew from the St. Louis Public Schools on Dec. 19, 2007. After confirming the authenticity of the e-mail, officials sought to play down the incident.

"We're not happy about this, but it's fixed," said district spokeswoman Deborah Sistrunk.

Sistrunk said she could not explain how a student no longer enrolled at the school could earn grades and be counted as present in classes. "We don't know how it happened," she said.

The St. Louis public school system has been in disarray in recent years, struggling amid constant turnover in senior leadership. The State Board of Education stripped the district of accreditation in March, citing a long history of poor academic performance, low graduation rates and financial problems.

A special advisory board took control in June. The board's president, Rick Sullivan, said he wants to learn more about the student getting grades when he or she was not at school.

"While I'm confident this is an isolated incident, we are going to look into it with the goal of eliminating something like this happening in the future," said Sullivan.

Former elected school board president Veronica O'Brien said the Gateway lapse was another example of a city school inflating attendance in a quiet effort to increase state funding.

State education allocations are tied to attendance.

"This kind of stuff goes on all the time," said O'Brien. "If you count people in attendance, then you obviously receive revenue for those people from the state."

Attendance at Gateway and other city middle and high schools is recorded on a computer program at the beginning of each class period. Teachers note if a student is present, absent, tardy or absent for a specific reason, such as suspension or extracurricular academic activities.

Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education spokesman Jim Morris said the state does monitor districts to detect possible cases of attendance inflation.

"There are some checks built into the process to help maintain integrity," said Morris. "But it's largely on the honor system."