Saskatchewan principal allegedly offered to pay teachers to raise daughter’s grade

[File photo of a classroom/Thinkstock]

Being a teacher’s pet tends to pay off with deadline extensions, leniency on lateness or getting to choose your own lab partner.

Being a principal’s pet can backfire in a big way though, especially if the principal is your mom.

Kimberly Sautner, former principal of Wolseley High School near Regina, has been accused of asking teachers under her employ to change her daughter’s final grades in 2014, going so far as to offer them $500.

When many of them refused, Sautner allegedly took it upon herself to make the changes, the Saskatchewan Teacher’s Federation heard Tuesday.

“I’ve never changed a grade,” Sautner, who is currently working as a principal in Calgary, said. “Absolutely not.”

“If she’d had an overall 80 per cent average in English in high school, she’d be exempt from taking that English course altogether,” Sautner explained to the professional ethics committee.

But her daughter only had a 72 average, making her ineligible to enter the University of Lethbridge teaching program.

“School didn’t come easy to her but she worked hard at it,” Sautner said.

Sautner claims she reached out to her daughter’s teachers as a parent, hoping they could help the girl improve her grades. She said the offer of $500 would be payment for their time and help, not a bribe to simply change the grade.

“I was trying to be a good person and I was trying to compensate her for the time she’d be putting into it,” Sautner said. "It was my way of saying thank you.”

Two teachers disputed Sautner’s claims telling the eight person committee that the concerned parent approached them as a principal.

“I thought it was pretty strange,” Gayle Wheatley, one of the English teachers approached, said of the text message she received from Sautner.

Crystal Hrbachek, now acting principal at Wolesley, was also approached by Sautner who explained that her daughter needed to up her grade by eight points.

This statement set off alarms for Hrbachek who distinctly remembered Sautner’s daughter earning a 60 in the class. She contacted Wheatley and the two women found the original files showing that Sautner’s daughter had indeed only earned a 60, as well as other discrepancies in the girl’s marks.

The committee heard that in total, six grades were altered using the school’s administration system that only Sautner and one other school employee had access to. Three students had one grade each changed, while Sautner’s daughter had her marks increased in three courses; English, Social Sciences and Theater Arts.