KANSAS CITY, Mo. — A handful of students at DeLaSalle in Kansas City have been accused of gaining unauthorized access to the school's grading system to change their grades.
One of the accused students, junior Xavier Bass, denies the allegations.
"I worked hard this year, real hard," he said.
Bass was scheduled to graduate a year early, on Thursday with the seniors at his school, including his sister.
Now, he will not be able to. Monday morning school officials notified Bass' parents he would no longer be able to graduate because of the fixed marks.
According to the school, grades for six of his eight classes were changed.
"By my knowledge, they have no evidence that my son changed his grade," said Maxine, Bass' mom.
41 Action News spoke with the school's executive director, Elizabeth Ann Sanders.
She said three seniors appeared to be involved as well as a couple of underclassmen.
The underclassmen whose grades had been changed will have to repeat those classes. The graduating students, however, were given the opportunity to "demonstrate mastery" by taking tests, said Sanders.
Bass passed five tests but failed one. He is half a credit short of being eligible to graduate.
"I thought it was unfair, why does he have to take the tests when you don't have the evidence to prove that he is the kid that actually changed his grades," said Maxine.
Sanders said the school completed an investigation and traced the IP address used to log in to the grading system back to Bass.
He, however, has denied changing his grades or asking someone to change them for him.
"I didn't know my stuff got changed until they told me," he said. "I'm going to go to summer school and get that half credit. Be done with this."
DeLaSalle provided 41 Action News with the following statement:
"Academic honesty and integrity are important characteristics not only for our students but for everyone. DeLaSalle does everything we can to make our students successful nor only as students but as citizens. Integrity is what causes you to tell the truth regardless of how tempting it is to shade the truth."
Bass' family plans on fighting the allegations. Graduation for the school is scheduled for Thursday.
