A 15-year-old student from a private school in Huntsville last month blended into the student body of a crosstown high school for two days, attending classes while texting friends back at the private school “bragging” about her escapades, according to the private school principal.

The fun ended when the student returned to Jemison High School for a third day. She was detained by Huntsville City Schools officials and, later in the day, expelled from the private school.

Christie Finley, superintendent of Huntsville City Schools, said the student was only on campus one day for about three hours. But as a result of the incident, Finley said she intends to mandate students wear identification badges similar to the ones employees wear.

The student attended Huntsville Achievement School, which has an enrollment of about 70 students and provides a small-class setting for at-risk students as well as those with dyslexia, high-functioning autism and attention deficit disorder.

Richard Reynolds, the school’s principal, said that the student did not show up on Jan. 7-8 when classes resumed following the Christmas break. The student had disciplinary issues at Huntsville Achievement School, Reynolds said.

Citing federal privacy laws, Reynolds said he could not release the student’s name.

“She was sending texts to students here,” Reynolds said. “After we found this out, she was essentially bragging through texts.”

For two days, the student was embedded with the students at Jemison and sat through classes, Reynolds said. Jemison is about six miles north of Huntsville Achievement School.

Finley, however, gave a different report at a school board meeting last month.

The superintendent spoke unprompted about the situation with the unauthorized student on campus at the Jan. 24 board of education meeting. She said there was a school-aged student who was on campus the afternoon of Jan. 7 “for approximately three hours.” That timeframe, Finley said, was determined by reviewing video at the school.

“We went minute-by-minute, second-by-second through it,” she said.

Finley said the student did not return until Jan. 9, at which point school officials stopped her.

If not for Reynolds, though, the student’s presence at the public school might not have been detected at all.

He said a faculty member from Huntsville Achievement School made an anonymous call to Jemison to alert administrators about the unauthorized student.

“I thought that would be it,” Reynolds said of the call to Jemison the first day. “Then the second day, she’s back. She’s texting again and enjoying it more. This is happy days are here again. This is like she’s at Disney World.”

On the second day, Reynolds said he bypassed calling the school again and instead contacted Pam Hill – a member of the Huntsville City Schools board of education and a lifelong friend.

Hill brought the issue into the public spotlight two days after she got the call from Reynolds.

“For the last two days, there has been a student from a private school in one of our high schools every single period,” Hill said in beginning her remarks from the dais at a Jan. 10 school board work session. “Only one teacher caught it on one day in one class. We have a security problem.

“For real, how can students be in our classes for two days? And then when they got caught, they got expelled from the private school because the private school is who called me.”

Following Hill’s remarks, Beth Wilder, president of the school board, turned to the superintendent sitting to her right.

“Ms. Finley, are you aware of this?” Wilder asked.

“No, I was not,” Finley said.

Finley did not respond to multiple interview requests AL.com made through a school system spokesman.

Reynolds said that, according to the student’s mother, administrators at the high school were searching for the student without success.

“I heard from the mother that they were honestly calling her name over the loudspeaker thinking she would turn herself in at Jemison,” Reynolds said.

In her comments at the Jan. 24 school board meeting, Finley emphasized the security concerns of having an unauthorized student on campus.

“We used to have student ID cards,” Finley said. “We are bringing them back. We have the resources in place to make that happen. Just like we wear a badge every day, students will be wearing a badge every day when they enter that building.”

The student ID cards are not yet school system policy, spokesman Keith Ward said Wednesday.

“Right now, the district is working on details of the implementation process,” Ward said in an email to AL.com. “The district will develop a draft proposal for consideration that will be shared and discussed soon at a future board meeting.”

Finley also said a renewed emphasis should be placed on teachers to take roll in each class each day and making eye contact with each student during that process.

Kenneth Trump, president of National School Safety and Security Services in Cleveland, Ohio, said it was “concerning” that an unauthorized student could attend class without detection.

“While many schools invest a good deal of time and staff to supervise student arrivals to school, it is possible that an individual might slip in undetected with a large group of students,” Trump said in an email to AL.com. “Once inside the building, we would hope the person was detected as students dispersed to their classrooms.

“But to think that a student sat in a classroom for two days undetected by an adult in charge of supervising the class is highly uncommon and concerning. First, we would expect teachers to take attendance, be alert, know their students, and recognize when someone does not belong in their room.”

Responsibility also falls to the students at the school, Trump said, just as everyone is expected to be alert to anything in the “see something, say something” society.

“We would also expect that at least one student report to an adult along the way that there was a non-student in their school and in their classroom,” he said. “Kids are typically very alert and in today's climate where school and safety officials are repeatedly warning students, ‘If you see something, say something,’ we would hope that at least one student would step up to report this intruder in their school and classroom.”

Reynolds said his motivation for contacting the high school and Hill, the school board member, was safety.

“The reason we did this was because of safety issues,” Reynolds said. “We try to collaborate with the public schools, we have teachers referring to us. This is not a gotcha thing.”