Paula Veggian knew there was trouble when her rookie principal commented that he had seen the students' names before - on a failure list.

Now the principal, Joseph D. Carruth, wanted Veggian to figure out how four seniors at Camden's elite Dr. Charles E. Brimm Medical Arts High had graduated even though records showed they should have been held back.

"We were both shocked," Veggian recalled. "I had never seen anything like this in my 37 years of employment with the board."

In her first extensive interview, Veggian described a tumultuous ordeal that began in July 2004 when she became a whistle-blower in an alleged grade-fixing scheme that would later snowball into a cheating scandal that has rocked the Camden School District.

"I'm outraged about what was done to the children, that they didn't immediately do something about the children," said Veggian, who remains in her job as scheduler at Brimm. "The very first thing they should have taken care of was the students."

The grade discrepancies, combined with later revelations about test rigging, set in motion a chain of events that shook South Jersey's largest district, eventually forcing the resignation of Superintendent Annette D. Knox and triggering a continuing and widespread state criminal investigation into the Camden schools.

For her part, Veggian was vilified and ostracized by critics who blamed her for tarnishing the reputation of the city's top magnet high school. Throughout, she remained stoic while trying to mount a legal battle against the district, contending she was harassed in retaliation for disclosing the alleged scheme.

She agreed to break her silence after a report last month by a district-hired investigator praised her for her "personal integrity and courage."

He wrote: "Ms. Veggian almost single-handedly corrected a festering problem at no small personal risk."

While she's relieved that the district finally admitted the grade fixing, she said, she can't get over what she's been through, including an aborted attempt by the district to demote her and send her to another high school.

"I was trying to do the right thing for the children, and their answer was to demote and transfer me against my will to a lower-paying job," she said. "Talk about outrage. They forced me to hire a lawyer and seek a legal avenue outside the educational community."

The investigator, former county prosecutor Edward F. Borden Jr., also determined that Brimm's high 2005 state standardized math test scores were due to illicit tampering and blamed cheating.

A state investigation in August said that "adult interference" explained the dramatic rise in test scores in two elementary schools. The probe began after The Inquirer raised questions about the scores.

Veggian, a former mathematics teacher, explained how, as Brimm's scheduler, she painstakingly combed through computer records in July 2004 to create a "failure list" of students who would not be promoted to the next grade.

"It started out with me just doing my job, and I continued to just do my job," Veggian said. She is responsible for compiling the master schedule of classes.

It actually started with Carruth, who became Brimm's principal that summer, she said.

"When he perused the total accumulated credit list, some of the names jumped out at him," Veggian said.

They learned that four seniors graduated that year without earning the needed credits, and that three underclassmen were wrongly promoted.

As she pulled more records, they came up with scores of students with questionable grades. They suspected that longtime guidance counselor Frederick Clayton was responsible for the grade changing. Ultimately, the district agreed and is trying to fire him. Clayton denies the accusations.