Tampering scandal shocks husband/coach

Tampering scandal shocks husband/coach

Coach’s wife charged with illegally changing player grades

The wife of a Chicagoland football coach has been accused of illegally using a school administration password and changing the grades of more than 40 of her husband's players.

As reported by the Chicago Tribune and Daily Herald, among other sources, Antioch (Ill.) Community High special education teacher Sara Glashagel has been charged with tampering with computer records after a trail in the school district's computer system traced inexplicable improvements in the grades of 64 students back to her hand. The teacher could face up to a year in jail and $2,500 in fines for tweaking the grades.

Glashagel was caught after police obtained a subpoena to discover the owner of a computer with an IP address beyond the school's network that had electronically changed students' grades on Sept. 17, 18, 20 and 21, and the IP address was traced directly to her personal computer. The four days of changes followed an initial alteration that another teacher reported to school authorities when she couldn't remember any reason why she would have improved the prospective student's grade.

"Our understanding is that some changes were made to make it less obvious, so it wasn't football players only," Antioch police chief Craig Somerville told the Tribune.

While the changes improved the academic standing of nearly the entire football team, there is no indication that Glashagel's husband, Antioch Community football coach Brian Glashagel, had anything to do with the incident. In fact, it's difficult to see why he would have been involved because the changes apparently didn't make any of the affected players eligible to play, other than those who were already eligible.

"I was absolutely blindsided by this," Brian Glashagel told the Daily Herald of his wife's involvement in the grade tampering scandal. "I had no idea who was involved up until three days ago.

"I am assuring everyone beyond my word that I had no knowledge of this taking place in the past. I have offered to police to take a polygraph, and I am still offering that up today. The administrators of Antioch are handling the situation internally, and I am trying to help out the school district any way I can."

Tampering scandal shocks husband/coach