<p>Okay, this seems really extreme to me. And, frankly, it kind of bugs me that this woman is getting the heat for something that a lot of parents around the country do, many of whom have more options than this woman seemed to have. Yes, she broke the law, but to put a felony on her record so she can never be a teacher and to put her in jail just seems extreme to me and I really wonder about this judge. This story was playing out on the radio this morning (in CA) and they had people calling in who had experience doing this, some as students and one an actual attendance administrator. Most of the time, from what I could tell, the school will ask the student to leave. Some of the time, they will allow the kid to stay with certain stipulations – GPA, no conduct issues, etc. In light of that, this seems harsh.</p>
<p>This reminds me of that other thread in the forum about whether or not to enroll your child in private school. Here’s another woman trying the do everything in her power to provide her children with a better education and safer environment, except unlike the rest of us she and her children lives in Akron public housing and have not the means to move to a better district. </p>
<p>Agree that the felony is a little too harsh. What irks me is that the public high school seeking to convict this mother spent thousands of dollars on attorney fees and private investigation fees, claiming that the money they’re losing to these people not paying the taxes to their district is worth much more. And here I am, always having thought that the purpose of our public school system is “opportunity for all” and non-profit education.</p>
<p>Gosh, what would happen if everyone wanted the best possible education for their children? How terrible! We can’t have that! Especially since she didn’t want to send her children to one of those charter schools!</p>
<ol>
<li><p>You citizens can raise the standards of lower performing schools to the level of the higher performing schools, thus achieving equalization. But this will cost money which no one never, ever has and which no one is willing to part if they did have money.</p></li>
<li><p>Lower the standards of the higher performing schools to that standard of the lower performing schools. Thereby equalizing the performance of schools. And possibly save some money. </p></li>
<li><p>Blame the unions and organized PTAs and you-know-who/whats.</p></li>
<li><p>If you got the wealth, exercise what it can buy and prevent. </p></li>
</ol>
<p>[Thankfully, where we live, the publics are better than the privates.]</p>
<p>There’s a lot more to the story than was mentioned in that article. Since 2005, the school district in question has raised residency issues with 48 families, 28 of whom were black. Williams-Bolar was the only parent from among the 48 families who would not work with the school district to regularize the situation (move in to the district, perhaps by living with her father, or take kids out of the school, or pay the tuition costs). That’s why she was prosecuted. (Though I do think a misdemeanor would have been more appropriate.) She has insisted that the choice of school had nothing to do with academic excellence, which shoots that argument down. She felt it was safer for her kids after school in that neighborhood. </p>
<p>The U.S. Office of Civil Rights investigated her case and determined that it was not a case of racial discrimination. </p>
<p>She had a significant number of higher performing schools to which she could have (legally) transferred her kids under state law, and her school district would have been required to provide free transportation; but she did not choose that approach. Her father has separately been charged with a number of counts of welfare and disability fraud.</p>
<p>Virtually every year we find families who got into a highly popular charter school through falsification of residency data, and it is never much fun to tell them that their child will not be allowed to enroll/stay enrolled, and I know the same is true with highly successful neighborhood schools. (You can Google plenty of articles on the steps Beverly Hills has taken to identify and exclude non-resident students, for an example right from California.)</p>
<p>She had the option of living with her dad. She chose not to do that, instead living in subsidized housing in a different district. She had the option of legally sending her kids to any one of a number different public schools, and instead she lied to send them to a school in a district in which she was not a resident. She got caught, and continued to defy the rules. Some people are experiential learners; she appears to be one of them.</p>
<p>So the kids were still attending long after the district found out that they didn’t live there? I’m trying to see how that would work… as a teacher I’m going to teach any child that shows up in my classroom, but wouldn’t the administration just pull the kids from class and phone the parent to come and get them? If she refused, wouldn’t that become a child welfare issue? How did this become a felony level offense? Very strange.</p>
<p>Well, it strikes me that if the “value” of a felony was set back in the days when $50 was the equivalent of a couple of months of wages that the value ought to be substantially higher now…</p>
<p>But as to dragonmom’s question – she just kept sending the kids, even after the issue was raised.</p>
<p>You have to keep in mind that schools are equipped with resources that are finite at any given time. When a student is enrolled who is not a resident of that city that child is using a potion of the resources that, by right, belong to the residents. Right or wrong, fair or unfair, that’s what it boils down to. If your child was being denied resources that he or she, as a resident, is entitled to, would you be okay with that? If those resources were being used by a non resident? How about two non residents, or ten or twenty?</p>
I"m sure there is more here than the district can say. Mom keeps sending them, ok. In CA is the district legally obligated to educate every kid dropped off, or can they ask for the parent and then child welfare to pick up the kid who has been abandoned in a place where they are not legally under control?</p>
<p>It sounds like she could have been more cooperative and worked something out with the district. She wasn’t convicted of the grand larceny charge, nor was her father, she was only convicted of tampering with records. It seems clear that was the “crime” though it’s too bad that her intended career is no longer an option for her as that probably would have done her kids, and the taxpayers, far more good in the the long run.</p>
<p>It’s hard for me to really sympathize with this woman because she seems to have had other choices, including living with her dad, and this has been a costly problem for several districts in my area as well. Our district no longer accepts any out of district kids, even those willing to pay tuition, and checks very carefully to verify that both new enrollees and current students are actually residents. Several years ago my sister and her two elementary aged kids came to stay with me for a few months after a very traumatic break-up with her husband. It was a very stressful time and they all really needed the help and support. Her kids were already attending school in my district, but at a different elementary school than the one my kids attended, and one of us would take them to school and pick them up every day. Their school raised all kinds of fuss about that and sis was given 60 days to transfer them to the school near my house or find housing within the boundaries. I thought it was ridiculous, especially since she still owned a home there, was intending to buy another before the end of the school year, and their dad was still living in that area. But no amount of pleading or reasoning would sway them and she had to rent an apartment in the interim.</p>
<p>Our school system, and i hope, most others, practice compassion and reason when it comes to temporary situations. If a student has moved out of district a few months before the year’s end or even a year before aging out of that particular school, they are allowed to finish out the year. They recognize that there is trauma involved in changing schools and towns and work with the parents to minimize that for a smooth transition. They do not, however, look kindly upon families who fake residency in order to attend our schools.</p>
<p>mini, I would certainly agree that her offense should not rise to the level of a felony, but if she wants her kids to be safer–and if all of the higher-performing schools to which she had access are in fact less safe than the school she chose–wouldn’t they be even safer if she moved in with her father, who actually lives in the safer disctrict?</p>
<p>I must say that if she had a choice of several schools that actually perform better than the school where she enrolled them, which is what arabrab indicated, I find it hard to believe that those schools are less safe than the school she chose. Lack of safety and lack of achievement inside a school tend to go hand in hand, don’t you think?</p>
<p>I appreciate finding out more, but I don’t think it should be a felony. I’ve known people who were arrested for heroin possession who didn’t get a felony on record. A little perspective is in order. Also, why do people like Paris Hilton and Lindsey Lohan get to drive the wrong way on freeways, repeatedly get arrested for drugs, etc. and suffer no lasting legal consequences, but some mom who one some level was trying to do right by her kids gets a felony on her record?</p>
<p>Although I believe charging her with a felony went a bit far, I do believe she should answer for being dishonest. I am a school employee and I can’t tell you how often we find that parents have lied about their residency in order to send their children to our school. We are a city school in a county that is known for good schools. Many people move to this county for the school system and they especially try to move in to the city zone for the city school district. My particular school is unique from the other city schools in its offerings and we only except 100 students per grade. We are a public school, but we have an admission process (prioritize socio-economic diversity and siblings of current students). </p>
<p>As a resident and tax payer of this city, it makes me angry when we find that people who don’t even live in our district (or occasionally even our county!) have managed to circumvent the system in order to get their children in here. They lie about living with grandparents, they present falsified leases, etc. It’s especially bothersome when those children who are attending illegally are keeping someone who lives in the district from being able to attend. A third grade class went on a field trip last year to a facility in the next county. As they passed a neighborhood in that county, two of the third graders proclaimed that to be their neighborhood. I feel sorry for the kids who have been told to lie about where they live. One of the teachers assigned an in-class letter writing assignment that included the child’s home address. A couple of children wouldn’t write their addresses … they had been instructed by their parents not to share where they lived. Why? Because they were attending our school when they lived out of district. Our school system is in financial trouble at this time as are many school districts. There are many cuts being made in many areas. I’m sorry, but we simply don’t have the funds to educate those not living in our district when we can’t even keep all the programs needed to educate those who attend here legally. If those parents want to continue sending their chidlren to our school, they need to move in to our district and pay the city taxes that support our school.</p>
<p>I can see reason in either side of this issue. However, if the Ohio parent persistently told lies I would be less likely to support her.</p>
<p>As others noted, this matter is a significant issue in many districts throughout the U.S. In particular, urban northeastern U.S. school districts have been known to employ private investigators and upon discovering non-residents in their midst, bill the parents and threaten prosecution. Some innocent folks get caught up in the silly bureaucracy. In New Jersey a school district lost a court case wherein the child was clearly living with an aunt after the death of a parent. The problem was that the aunt didn’t initially file the appropriate paperwork. Even after the right documentation was provided, which allowed [confirmed] the child’s new residential status, the district demanded tuition retroactively for the period prior to official recognition of aunt’s guardianship. The judge and common sense prevailed when he reminded the school district that the law [and the intent of the law] says that the child must live in the district and that this particular youngster in fact lived in the district with his legal guardian, namely his aunt.</p>
<p>In the more typical situation regarding this issue, the whole thing leaves a lot of disillusionment and dissapointment. One the one hand, school taxes are an acrimonious issue wherein residents are easily angered if they believe out-of-town kids are improperly enrolled in local schools. On the other hand, how can we as a society be comfortable with the fact desparate parents are forced to keep their kids in a low-performing school simply because that is their school zone assignment?</p>
<p>But they’re not. If a child is enrolled in a high poverty school (Title I school) AND the school has had several years of failing to meet Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) the families have an absolute right under the law to transfer their child to a performing school and the school district is required to pay for the transportation. There were a number of schools that met this criteria in this parent’s case – but she did not choose to work with that option. (And, as a teacher-in-training, you would expect that she was reasonably familiar with NCLB since it has been probably the key topic in education for the past five years.)</p>
<p>But NCLB does not compel districts to approve a transfer if there is no seat available, does it? Are there other NCLB exceptions that essentially leave a parent with no true alternative? From the news that is available thus far, the Ohio parent’s circumstances were not particularly dire, but that doesn’t mean that she had optimal alternatives.</p>
<p>There were seats available; I don’t remember if it was five or six different schools that met the criteria. </p>
<p>Life doesn’t always grant us optimal alternatives. If it did, D would be attending a $55K a year highly ranked LAC. </p>
<p>This mom had viable legal alternatives, but chose the illegal approach and then was defiant about it when called on it. This isn’t a situation where I have a lot of sympathy.</p>