The Latest Crime Wave: Sending Your Child to a Better School

Parent Cafe
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School districts hire special investigators to follow kids home in order to verify their true residences.</p>

<p>In case you needed further proof of the American education system’s failings, especially in poor and minority communities, consider the latest crime to spread across the country: educational theft. That’s the charge that has landed several parents, such as Ohio’s Kelley Williams-Bolar, in jail this year.</p>

<p>An African-American mother of two, Ms. Williams-Bolar last year used her father’s address to enroll her two daughters in a better public school outside of their neighborhood. After spending nine days behind bars charged with grand theft, the single mother was convicted of two felony counts. Not only did this stain her spotless record, but it threatened her ability to earn the teacher’s license she had been working on.</p>

<p>[Micheal</a> Flaherty: The Latest Crime Wave—Sending Your Child to a Better School - WSJ.com](<a href=“http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903285704576557610352019804.html]Micheal”>http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903285704576557610352019804.html)</p>

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<p>I don’t think that’s true if they don’t live within the district boundaries. The issue is one of residency.</p>

<p>It’s a sad statement of the inequality that exists among our neighborhood schools.
I can understand that the district needs to be sure that all of it’s students are residents, but the consequences of breaking the law here seem pretty extreme. Isn’t just telling them they can’t come, enough?
A fine would be appropriate, but jail time for the parent is really too much, imo.</p>

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<p>It is not true. Residency rules apply to all students.</p>

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<p>“Only in a world where irony is dead could people not marvel at concerned parents being prosecuted for stealing a free public education for their children.” OP</p>

<p>Public school isn’t free - property and other taxes pay for public schools.</p>

<p>This is an old story, and there is another CC thread about this.</p>

<p>The woman’s youngest child is attending a better school now using a voucher. However, she claims in a NYT interview 9/11 that her motive for lying on documents wasn’t to get her kids into a better school.</p>

<p>NYT article 1/11.</p>

<p>"If the children in this article were illegal immigrants, they would be able to stay in the better schools."OP</p>

<p>Like the kids in Alabama.</p>

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<p>“Why all the attention and focus on legal citizens trying to do the right thing for their kids?”
WHAT attention?? one story?? seriously? it caught your eye but only because you already have an anti immigrant agenda that fits in nicely with this little news article.
some parents try to pull one over school on districts that they can’t afford to live in. Its understandable, but parents get caught all the time trying to get sneak their kids into better schools. Most are simply kicked out. in this case the punishment was way too much for the “crime”.</p>

<p>"From California to Massachusetts, districts are hiring special investigators to follow children from school to their homes to determine their true residences "
The Palo Alto school system instituted residence checks over a decade ago. This is not “new” news, just something Murdochs WSJ wants to now report.</p>

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<p>parent1986

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<p>Her best defense was certainly to make the argument that her father, the children’s maternal grandparent, was a key and necessary part of their care. The fact that a school district went after a parent with legal consequences for something like this (over a year after her children stopped attending the school) is OUTRAGEOUS. </p>

<p>Parents across the country are getting caught putting their children in school districts other than the one they are supposed to be in. People are spending lots of money trying to catch them. What do you think, common sense wise, the odds are that parents are pulling kids from great schools to sneak them into underperforming ones? Please.</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/27/us/jailed-for-switching-her-daughters-school-district.html[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/27/us/jailed-for-switching-her-daughters-school-district.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>We read this piece and thought it was really foul to go after parents trying to get the best education possible for their kids. We did the same thing only our kids got scholarships and we had funds to pay what was left to send them out of our failing school system and to private. It felt terrible, like we were abandoning our school family but it was what we felt we had to do as responsible parents. And it’s worth noting, that a huge influx of non-English speaking students (have no idea what the percentage of illegals was) pretty much turned out to be the straw that broke the camel’s back – it just sucked all resources that were left toward trying to get those kids speaking English. Each year the percentage of ESL kids kept increasing, the schools became more out-of-control and more families fled by selling their homes and moving or going with private school or homeschooling.</p>

<p>At the time, I wasn’t angry with anyone in particular. I just felt really sad and wrung out by what was happening.</p>

<p>I’m not sure it’s about legal vs illegal kids in the public schools. I think educating non-English speaking kids is enormously expensive. We didn’t always do that right? My Italian immigrant relatives a generation or two back pretty much shouldered the task themselves of learning English and seeing that their kids learned English.</p>

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<p>It has taken, on average, 2 generations for the preceding waves of immigrants to adequately learn English. Without public education, it would (IMO) have taken longer.</p>

<p>We have short memories when money is tight. I do not dispute any family’s decisions for their children. I do dispute shortsighted government decisions that, effectively, drive children of educated parents from public schools, thereby further encumbering those schools with disproportionately expensive-to-educate/remediate students.</p>

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<p>mafool

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<p>Having a strong parent community can make all the difference in the world.</p>

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<p>We need immigration if we are going to survive the demographic changes ahead. I do admit that I’m not a big supporter of illegal immigration. Is that reprehensible?</p>

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<p>One is tempted to resort to the immigrant-bashers oft-heard refrain: “What part of ILLEGAL don’t you understand???” :D</p>

<p>It is the law that kids are entitled to attend schools in their district in which they live. Lying so they can attend a school in a different district - whether it be for a better education, better athletic opportunities, or to get a boost for attending a low-performing school, as is true in some cases, is illegal. It’s illegal because you’re lying to get a benefit you’re not entitled to under the directly applicable law.</p>

<p>On the other hand, in many states at least, proof of citizenship or legal residency per federal law is not required for a child to be legal entitled to attend a local school in the district in which he or she lives - simply proof of physical residency in the district. There’s lots of reasons for that, but they needn’t be belabored. That’s also the law.</p>

<p>Interesting how some folks cherry-pick the ILLEGAL things they choose to elevate above others.</p>

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<p>Thanks, kluge, for reminding us of the larger picture.</p>

<p>This behavior is illegal, even if the descendants of the perpetrator came on the Mayflower.</p>

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<p>lol, our school district was known for bribing the families of star athletes in other districts to move to our district to play their sport. There was a case where the school district actually paid the rent on a house for the family, cars, no-show jobs. Of course, this same district couldn’t be bothered to recognize NMSFs or stuff like that. Yikes. Bad memories.</p>

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<p>What’s that saying - love the sinner, hate the sin? I hate that saying. </p>

<p>Anyway, there is a difference between bashing illegal immigration and bashing illegal immigrants. We are talking about children, who had nothing to do with how they got here. Let’s be consistent and support them - all of them. </p>

<p>Or we can do what Alabama is doing and turn teachers into ICE agents.</p>

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<p>"Are there lots of people on CC that are in support of illegal immigration? I’d be curious as to why. "</p>

<p>the question is what to do about the children of illegal immigrants, many of whom have lived in this country nearly their entire lives, which in many cases is decades, gone to school here, speak english perfectly, and think of themselves as americans. What should be done when these students try to go to college? </p>

<p>[Ongo</a> | UC Davis honor student facing deportation gets reprieve](<a href=“http://admin.ongo.com/v/1210976/-1/E4BC7C0A73862F86/uc-davis-honor-student-facing-deportation-gets-reprieve]Ongo”>http://admin.ongo.com/v/1210976/-1/E4BC7C0A73862F86/uc-davis-honor-student-facing-deportation-gets-reprieve)</p>

<p>Mandeep Chahal, a pre-med hon<em>or student at UC Davis, and her moth</em>er fac<em>ing deportation to India have been giv</em>en a re<em>prieve, their lawyer said today. Both were sched</em>uled to be deported to India at 1 a.m. Wednesday.</p>

<p>[College</a> student won’t be deported to Bangladesh, for now - latimes.com](<a href=“Archive blogs”>College student won't be deported to Bangladesh, for now)</p>

<p>A college student who grew up in New York has won a temporary reprieve from immigration officials who had threatened to deport her to her native Bangladesh, which she left as an infant when her mother brought her to the United States.</p>

<p>some legislators in Georgia would deny them the ability to go to college at all, because their parents brought them here illegally when they were babies decades ago, when “illegal immigration” it was not a politically charged issue.</p>

<p>"Any day, they could be arrested and scheduled for deportation to a country they barely know.</p>

<p>That’s what happened to Jessica Colotl, a Kennesaw State University student who was arrested in March after a routine traffic stop on campus. She was shipped off to a deportation facility, where she was held until protests from academic leaders and immigration activists bought her a reprieve. Officials from Immigration and Customs Enforcement have said she will be allowed to finish her degree, but she is still subject to deportation when she’s done.</p>

<p>(That doesn’t go far enough for some Georgia lawmakers. Next month, the State Board of Regents will consider a proposal to ban illegal immigrants from the state’s most selective universities. Several legislators want to ban them from all post-secondary education.)</p>

<p>A similar fate awaits Harvard University student Eric Balderas, who was arrested in June while trying to board a plane back to Boston after visiting his family in Texas. Balderas, who hopes to one day become a cancer researcher, was valedictorian of his San Antonio high school class.</p>

<p>Why aren’t we proud of the all-American accomplishments of Colotl, Balderas and the thousands of students like them? There can be no rational argument that they have refused to learn English or that they represent a permanent underclass. So why don’t we embrace them as future Americans?</p>

<p>Instead, we’ve succumbed to nativist resentments, refusing to acknowledge how much the country needs more college-educated workers. While critics of illegal immigration insist that the country should concentrate on importing workers who are already highly skilled, that’s no substitute for growing our own college grads.</p>

<p>An Indian or Chinese engineer, admitted on an H-1B visa, may decide to work here a few years before returning home.</p>

<p>But kids like Balderas and Colotl consider themselves Americans. They have no intention of returning to countries that are foreign to them. So why not grant them citizenship under certain strict conditions?</p>

<p>Interviewed Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Former Secretary of State Colin Powell, who was born to Jamaican immigrants, said as much: “We can’t be anti-immigration. Immigrants are fueling this country. Without immigrants, America would be like Europe or Japan with an aging population and no young people coming in to take care of it. We have to educate our immigrants"</p>

<p>those are the facts I was talking about.</p>

<p>"We are talking about children, who had nothing to do with how they got here. Let’s be consistent and support them - all of them. "
Well said!</p>

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<p>Wow, Menlo, that is a long and very heartfelt post. This seems to be a big issue for you.</p>

<p>As for this question you ask:</p>

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<p>I think a lot of Americans just don’t get why their own forebears came to America through the legal process and so many today apparently do not.</p>

<p>I always wonder why we don’t just look at our immigration controls. If so many want in and are coming illegally maybe we just need to loosen the restrictions so they can come legally.</p>

<p>But actually, the numbers of illegal immigrants are going down of late because our economy is so bad. Have been seeing that in the news lately.</p>

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<p>re Menloparkmom’s very eloquent post:
We limit ourselves with our prejudices
We limit ourselves with our preconceptions.
We limit ourselves when we draw lines between “us” and “them.”
We limit ourselves with our unthinking legalisms
Now, please replace “we limit ourselves” with “we deny our shared culture a vast enrichment.”</p>

<p>I wish I were not so tired; I am sure I could have done this better. But I think you get my intent.</p>

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<p>I think it would be very hard to find any American who does not look on immigration as a core strength of our country. It’s how most of us got here.</p>

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<p>sewhappy, would that you were right! I am afraid that you are not.
~mafool (German, English and Welsh)</p>

<p>No accent at this point.
Pigmentation was never an issue. Is this the divide? Not sure.</p>

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<p>“It’s how most of us got here.”
and isn’t it remarkable how quickly some politicians, reporters, radio talk show hosts, etc, etc, all trying to make political hay, have forgotten that very point.
reminds me a little bit of the slogan-" Welcome to Oregon-now go home!" that was thought up a while ago by some in our neighbor state trying to discourage Calif residents from moving north.</p>