A former high school counselor’s aide at the West Delaware High School in Manchester who admitted to altering the grades of students was sentenced to jail time Monday. Luann Carpenter also admitted to stealing more than five thousand dollars from the school, and will have to pay fines. On January eighth Carpenter plead guilty to two counts of second-degree theft, one count of fifth-degree theft and ten counts of falsifying or altering academic grades. She was sentenced to five years in prison on each of the two felony theft charges, but those sentences were suspended and she was place on probation for at least two years.
Carpenter was also sentenced to thirty days in jail on each of the ten grade-altering charges, as well as the fifth degree theft charge. The court ordered those sentences to be served at the same time. Carpenter resigned last January from the district after Manchester police began investigating. Between 199 and 2004 Carpenter was accused of changing the official grades and final transcripts for several students on the school computer.
Carpenter was charged with theft after she was accused of misappropriating over two-thousand dollars from the Iowa Cheerleaders Coaches Association between 2001 and 2003. She was also accused of stealing more than 32-hundred dollars in high school prom ticket money between 2002 and 2004.