Two Ohio high-school students face expulsion and criminal charges after allegedly using their access to a Web server to post a notice that the local schools had closed due to snow.

The two girls, whose names were not released, appear to have used a password on Sunday, Feb. 4, to change the Edgewood School District's notice of one-hour delay to "Edgewood Schools Closed," according to media reports. The notice caused some parents to keep their children at home and caused others to criticize the school district's apparent late-night decision to cancel classes.

"I didn't make that call, and I'm the guy who does, so I knew something was up," Tom York, superintendent of schools for Trenton, Ohio, told the Associated Press.

On Friday, police charged one of the girls, 16, with delinquency by unauthorized use of a computer and by reason of records tampering, while the other, 17, was charged with delinquency by reason of complicity, according to the Associated Press.

A number of high-schools students have been charged with hacking in the past. In 2005, a Massachusetts court sentenced a teenager to 11 months in a juvenile detention facility for hacking into Paris Hilton's cell phone and posting the celebrity's data online. In that same year, a Minnesota high-school senior was sentenced to 18 months in prison and 10 months of community service for modifying the original Blaster worm and re-releasing the program. And, in 2002, a California teenager plead guilty to hacking the Web site of the city of Stockton, Calif., receiving two years of probation and an $18,000 fine.

The company that maintains the Edgewood schools' Web site stated that the server was not hacked but accessed with a valid password, according to the Associated Press. The school district has temporarily suspended the service.



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