MARYSVILLE – Ian Sutton and his parents were perplexed when Marysville-Pilchuck High School sent a letter urging them to check his grades electronically.
They did as advised, using the student identification number and password the school provided.
The surprise was not what the grades were, but that Ian had any grades at all.
Ian doesn’t go to the school. He lives in Wenatchee.
That’s why his father, Dan Sutton, can chuckle at his son’s D in language arts and why he won’t get on Ian to raise his other grades, a mix of Bs and Cs.
“It’s not bad for not attending the school,” Dan Sutton said.
Ian is a ninth-grader earning As and Bs at Eastmont Junior High School in East Wenatchee.
The Suttons moved from Marysville to Wenatchee earlier this year. Ian attended Marysville’s Cedarcrest School, a middle school campus, last spring, but was enrolled at Eastmont by the time classes began this fall when he would have started at Marysville-Pilchuck.
A letter from the Marysville School District, which had been forwarded from the Suttons’ previous address, reached the family earlier this month. It explained how they could follow their child’s grades through a Web-based grade book known as Basmati.
The letter included the student identification number and a computer-generated password.
Just for curiosity, the family checked.
What the Suttons found was a series of grades maintained by teachers at the school that had been updated Dec. 17.
“It really surprised me …,” Ian said. “I even had attendance (records) for classes.”
District officials say the grade report belongs to another Marysville-Pilchuck student, and the letter was mistakenly sent to the Suttons.
How it ended up with the Suttons is subject to speculation until school reopens after Jan. 1, said Ken Ainsworth, the district’s technology director.
Even so, Ainsworth believes the mix-up occurred when the high school was compiling information from two sources – a regionally maintained electronic student records system and the Web-based grade reporting system.
The two systems have separate security and don’t link directly to one another.
“It takes a fairly significant amount of work for 2,400 to 2,500 kids’ records to generate a mailing,” Ainsworth said. “It just looks like an error was made when those addresses were correlated.”
The result: Ian Sutton was given access to another student’s grades.
Ainsworth said the identity of the other student remains confidential.
“We will do a quick little investigation (after winter break) and just make sure that there is nothing wrong with our system that will make a problem like this more widespread,” Ainsworth said.
Dan Sutton finds it ironic that the schedule sent to them closely matches one Ian would have taken.
The Suttons are looking for some assurances.
“Our original concern was if these grades in any capacity truly exist, my son has a better grade point average,” Dan Sutton said. “We didn’t want the transcripts getting mixed up. We didn’t want them having any impact on his college prospects.”
Reporter Eric Stevick: 425-339-3446 or stevick@heraldnet.com.
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