Former. Sask. principal defends cash offer to change grades
A former Saskatchewan principal says she was “trying to be a good person” when she offered to pay teachers to change her daughter’s high school marks.
Kimberley Sautner, 44, was the former principal of Wolseley High school between 2008 and 2014. She was on the stand at a disciplinary hearing Tuesday over accusations of professional misconduct.
Evidence shows in January, six months after Sautner left her position at the school, she sent text messages to English teacher Gayle Wheatley and another teacher asking them to change her daughter’s first semester Grade 12 English grade from 72 per cent to 80 per cent or above. She offered to pay the teachers $500 for their time.
Sautner testified that at the time the messages were sent, her daughter was enrolled at the University of Lethbridge and was struggling with her first-year English course. A faculty adviser told them the daughter had the option to either redo the course with the same or a different professor, or skip the course if she could provide proof she got an average mark higher than 80 per cent in Grade 12 English.