PITTSBURG, Kan. – Journalism students at Kansas’ Pittsburg High School recently exposed their new principal’s questionable education credentials, and the discovery forced her to resign from the $93,000-a-year job on Tuesday.

“She was going to be the head of our school, and we wanted to be assured that she was qualified and had the proper credentials,” senior Trina Paul, editor of the Booster Redux student newspaper, told the Kansas City Star. “We stumbled on some things that most might not consider legitimate credentials.”

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On March 6, the Pittsburg Board of Education voted to hire Amy Robertson, an educator who has spent roughly the last two decades in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, to serve as principal of Pittsburg High School based on her alleged education degrees from Corllins University, and experience as CEO of the consulting firm Atticus I S Consultants.

In a press release, district spokesman Zach Fletcher announced “Robertson comes to Pittsburg with decades of experience in education.” The release also praised her work with “an education consulting firm where she gained leadership and management experience at the international equivalence of a building administrator and superintendent,” the Star reports.

“I felt like she is very knowledgeable about what is going on in education today in college and career read8iness, she is very familiar with Common Core, she knows about how a building works and about maintaining a safe environment,” superintendent Destry Brown said.

But the more students began digging into her past, the quicker it seemed to unravel.

They learned through online searches that Corllins University is not an accredited university, and is known as a diploma mill offering useless degrees and diplomas. The school’s website was also defunct, students found.

The aspiring journalists also contacted the U.S. Department of Education, which had no record of the school or its closure since 1986. When students contacted Robertson to discuss the issues, she alleged “the current status of Corllins University is not relevant because when I received my MA in 1994 and my PhD in 2010, there was no issue.”

Students reported that Robertson also “presented incomplete answers, conflicting dates and inconsistences in her responses,” according to The Washington Post.

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In a later conversation with the Star, Robertson alleged “All three of my degrees have been authenticated by the US government,” and refused to comment further on “the questions posed by PHS students regarding my credentials because their concerns are not based on facts.”

The student’s online searches also turned up articles by Gulf News detailing Robertson’s connection to an English language school in Dubai, junior Maddie Baden, one of six students who participated in the research, told the Star.

“The 2012 articles said Dubai’s education authority had suspended the license for Dubai American Scientific School and accused Robertson of not being authorized to serve as principal of that school,” the Star reports. “The private, for-profit school received an ‘unsatisfactory’ rating on Dubai education authority inspection reports every year from 2008 to 2012 and was closed in September 2013.”

“Everybody kept telling them, ‘stop poking your nose where it doesn’t belong,’” student newspaper advisor Emily Smith told The Post. “They were at a loss that something that was so easy for them to see was waiting to be noticed by adults.”

“All of this was completely overlooked,” student journalist Connor Balthazar said of Robertson’s questionable credentials. “All of the shining reviews did not have these crucial pieces of information … you would expect your authority figures to find this.”

The students published their findings in the Booster Redux on Friday, with superintendent Brown’s encouragement.

“The kids had never gone through someone like this before,” he said. “I want our kids to have real-life experiences, whether it’s welding or journalism.”

At a special school board meeting Tuesday, board president Al Mendez announced that Robertson is no longer coming to Pittsburg High School.

“In light of the issues that arose, Amy Robertson felt it was in the best interest of the district to resign her position,” Pittsburg Community Schools wrote in a prepared statement. “The Board has agreed to accept her resignation.”

The announcement earned the students praise from The Post’s David Fahrenthold, the Boston Globe’s Todd Wallack, and other influential journalists on social media.

“It was awesome to know that such respected members of the journalism community had our backs,” Balthazor told The Post. “Most high schoolers would never get even close to an opportunity to get to experience something like this.”

Brown told the Star school officials are now reopening the principal position and contacting recent applicants to see if they’re still interested.

“Our goal is to find the best person to be our principal that we can find,” Brown said. “I know the students want that too.”