Three high school girls, taken into a washroom one at a time by an off-duty Chicago police officer, told to drop their pants, squat and cough -- all in the hunt for a cigarette lighter that was never found.

Student grades bumped up a notch -- including Fs changed to Ds.

Dozens of student absences that mysteriously evaporated from report cards.

These are the charges that are now swirling around a charter school, one of dozens of new schools started under Mayor Daley's Renaissance 2010 initiative -- an approach touted by President-elect Barack Obama as he tapped Chicago Schools CEO Arne Duncan to be the nation's next U.S. Secretary of Education.

Chicago Public School officials say they investigated the allegations involving ASPIRA Early College Charter High School, and that two administrators and the off-duty Chicago police officer who was acting as a school security guard have been "disciplined'' and left the school as a result.

But the whistleblower in the case questions whether CPS acted thoroughly and swiftly enough, whether grades and attendance were ever fully corrected, and whether anyone is truly monitoring CPS charter schools.

"I was sick to my stomach about it,'' said teacher Meg Sullivan. "Is nothing sacred - not even children?''
'What else is going on?'

Sullivan said she complained in June to both ASPIRA of Illinois, which operates Early College High and three other charter schools, and to the CPS Office of New Schools, which oversees Renaissance 2010 schools. She said nothing much happened until she stood up publicly at the August School Board meeting.

Sullivan said it took ASPIRA five months to take any action against Principal Jose Velazquez, but ASPIRA fired her within days of her complaints to ASPIRA and CPS. She is pursuing a retaliatory discharge action against ASPIRA.

"I was fired within five days, and I didn't do anything but look out for the interests of the children,'' said Sullivan. "If I wasn't willing to risk my job, nothing would have happened.

"It makes me wonder what else is going on in these charter schools?''

This week, the office of CPS's inspector general opened its own investigation into grade-changing and alleged attendance tampering at ASPIRA Early College. Plus, CPS officials are now trying to determine if they acted as quickly as they could have, a CPS spokesman said.

Meanwhile, a federal lawsuit is expected to be filed Thursday against the off-duty female police officer and ASPIRA of Illinois on behalf of two of three girls whom lawyers James Fennerty and Robert Ludemann say were illegally "strip searched'' on Dec. 20, 2007, during the opening year of ASPIRA Early College High, then located at 3729 W. Leland.
'Squat and cough'

The attorneys contend the off-duty officer searched under the girls' shirts for a lighter allegedly used by a boy to set a fire in the boy's washroom. In addition, they said, the girls were told to drop their pants, lower their underwear, "squat and cough.'' One of the two girls refused to do so, they said.

The mother of that student told the Chicago Sun-Times she was "outraged'' by her daughter's treatment, and that the girl called her stepfather in tears about the search but the school never alerted the mom or the stepdad that the then-15-year-old freshmen was being searched. The mom said she pulled her daughter out of the school shortly afterward.

"As a parent, you send your child to school to be educated, not so they can be diminished and told to take off their clothes,'' said the mom, who asked to be identified only as Lucy to protect her daughter's privacy.

"That's not acceptable. I'm outraged and I'm assuming every other parent would feel the same way.''
'There would be hell to pay'

Also now looking into the alleged actions of the off-duty Chicago police officer is the Chicago Police Internal Affairs Division, said Chicago Police Department spokeswoman Monique Bond. Officers can be reprimanded for off-duty actions because "if you're a sworn police officer, you're obligated to comport yourself in a professional manner, both on and off duty.''

CPS didn't start investigating the search until August, and concluded its investigation in September, the same month it alerted law enforcement authorities, CPS officials said.

"If Arne Duncan's kids came home and said, 'I was strip searched,' there would be hell to pay,'' said whistle-blower Sullivan.

Sullivan and other teachers who worked at Early College last school year said that after being pressured by Velazquez to raise grades, they were stunned on the last day of school, when Velazquez gave them report cards to distribute.

Dozens of grades had suddenly been bumped up a notch, teachers said, and the number of days absent per student had been mysteriously changed to 0s -- a problem Velazquez blamed on a "computer glitch.''

Teachers said they complained so much that shortly after they gave students their report cards, they received an email from Velazquez saying "The grades have been restored as presented by the teachers.''

"Not one of us believed that he changed the grades back,'' Sullivan said.
Auditor: Information missing

Five days later, teachers said, ASPIRA Chief Instructional Officer Mary Ravid asked teachers to sign off on "restored" grades and attendance -- but those records still contained some errors. Six Fs Sullivan said she had handed out were still listed as Ds and 39 of her 85 student absence records -- or 45 percent -- were still too low.

For example, per student per class, 41 absences had suddenly become 28; a 31 was altered to 14, and a 21 was changed to 13, Sullivan's records indicate. The absences of another teacher's worst-attending students also had been altered downward, that teacher said.

Sullivan said she corrected the errors, returned the signoff sheet, and went that very day to the CPS Office of New Schools. There, she said, she gave officials copies of the corrected sign-off sheets and followed up with a note to the office's director, Josh Edelman, saying she and other teachers were "available to provide information'' into grade and attendance tampering; the December "strip search;'' ignored student misconduct reports and high teacher, student and principal turnover. The school is currently on its third principal in its three semesters of existence.

The Office of New Schools requested an attendance audit, but the CPS investigator who did the audit, Rick Dorsey, told the Sun-Times he was never told teachers were complaining their grades had been changed and had records to prove it. With teachers on summer break, Dorsey said, he looked only at summary records entered by the clerk, and his audit came up clean.

"If somebody had said, we have these 10 students who claim that their report card said they had 15 absences but their teacher said they had 27, that's a totally different thing,'' Dorsey said. "I'd need to know the names of the kids.'' In such a case, Dorsey said, he probably would have asked teachers what they put on report cards.

No one investigated the grade changing allegations until Sullivan showed up at the August school board meeting, CPS spokesman Michael Vaughn said.
'We followed through'

The law department eventually concluded the grades had been inflated, CPS officials said, but some teachers now question if CPS made sure the school fixed the errors.

Teachers said two students have since said they never received new report cards or any notice their grades had been changed from the ones handed out on the last day of school. At least one student received an F, meaning that credit would have to be made up, teachers said.

"We have faith and we do believe that they [ASPIRA officials] made the grade changes'' because they responded so thoroughly to improper search concerns, Edelman said. However, he refused to say if CPS had any evidence all grades had been corrected.

The Office of New Schools did not whitewash the case, Edelman said.

"I feel we followed through correctly,'' Edelman said. CPS decided to renew ASPIRA's charter in October, after the allegations surfaced, because ASPIRA "responded as an institution with integrity,'' he said.

Velazquez could not be reached for comment, and ASPIRA Board chair Sonia Sanchez -- chief of staff to state Sen. Iris Martinez (D-Chicago) -- said that due to Sullivan's retaliatory discharge contentions an attorney advised her to not answer any questions.

Sanchez did send the Sun-Times an email saying "employees involved in the misconduct are no longer with ASPIRA and we have issued a corrective-action plan to make sure our staff is aware of the proper procedures for student searches. Furthermore, we will work very closely with the CPS Office of New Schools to ensure that all data reported by the school is thorough and accurate."
'We have some concerns'

Sullivan said CPS is opening new schools at "breakneck speed,'' but "they have no process in place for oversight.'' Meanwhile she said, the Office of New Schools' response "leads me to believe they are more concerned with protecting their own jobs and their own agendas of privatizing schools than seeing students get the education they deserve. What makes this especially heartbreaking is that this could be happening in other schools and how would we know?

"How many teachers have to lose their jobs to report misconduct?''

CPS spokesman Vaughn said the CPS strip search investigation was delayed by questions about who should investigate charter school employees, who aren't CPS employees. The attendance audit was complicated by the fact that charter schools use a different attendance-recording system than other CPS schools, he said.

Even though the CPS auditor said he would have looked at different records if alerted to teacher complaints, Vaughn insisted the charges ultimately were "thoroughly investigated.''

However, Vaughn conceded, "We have some concerns about how the whole process was followed up on and how long it took to get investigated. We're not pointing fingers now. We're looking to see how it happened and how to make sure it won't happen again.''

Schools CEO Duncan, who faces a confirmation hearing for his federal appointment next week, did not respond to two days of phone calls, but Vaughn sent an email on his behalf, quoting Duncan as saying, "We investigated the allegations thoroughly; we've held ASPIRA accountable, and they've taken strong action to correct the situation.''

Contributing: Frank Main