Posted on 03/24/2002 4:27:50 PM PST by Tumbleweed_Connection
hat happens when a school district catches parents illegally exercising school choice? The school superintendent in Linwood, N.J. hired a $200-an-hour private investigator to determine the real address of students after some parents allegedly lied about where they live in order to send their kids to a better school.
In Englewood, N.J., the school board hired an outside management firm to root out illegally enrolled students and force them to pay tuition or attend schools in their home districts.
It's a similar story in other school districts across the country. School boards cite burgeoning class sizes and free loading as the main reasons for sending the kids packing. After all, the school officials argue, scofflaws don't pay local property taxes, a common funding mechanism for public schools.
In the case of 18-year-old Brandi Paquette, the reason for lying about her residency was to graduate with her class at the Baltimore County, Md. public school she had attended for three-and-a-half years.
Paquette's mother died in a car accident when the girl was 10 years old, and her father died three years later from a heart attack. Her foster parents separated and moved out of the school district, and Paquette, on her own, was unable to afford the tuition at her public school.
"Public school is the right by law of children who are bona fide county residents," the school supervisor of pupil personnel, Richard Simmons, told the Baltimore Sun in December 2001. "We are the gatekeepers of that policy."
School choice advocates, however, say state governments could provide better solutions for parents and students seeking choice in schools.
"The [school] board itself is interested in a pretty hard line about this," said David G. Matthews, president of the Englewood, N.J. public school board, echoing the sentiment of the Baltimore County school system. "We do want to find anyone that does not live in Englewood and not let them go to the school system unless they're paying tuition."
The Englewood school system is in the process of launching a new investigation into the residency status of the district's 2,600 students.
"There were complaints from members of the public, citizens, that wanted to know how big of a problem this was and if we were going to go about building new school buildings," said Matthews. "It's also just a fairness issue, that we really should not be paying for kids that do not live in the district, and I fully agree with that."
Lori Yaklin, executive director of the Michigan School Board Leaders Association (MSBLA), believes parents, in many cases, are trying to escape failing schools. She recalls the case of a Philadelphia mother who submitted a false address to send her child to a safer school. The school district, said Yaklin, responded by trying to charge her thousands of dollars in back tuition and even took her to court when she couldn't pay.
"It's a great example of how we criminalize parents who want good schools for their children," said Yaklin. School boards, she said, are often resistant to the idea of letting students attend school outside the district.
"Many times, ... even though the parents might think the other school suits their child better or is safer or the child is being bullied ... the school boards will not okay the release of that child to the other school," said Yaklin.
"We have examples of that here in Michigan," she said. School boards "don't have to [offer a reason]; they just say, 'you live here, you go here.' That's very often the attitude.
"What we tell school board members is that first of all, you should be responsive to the rights of the parents to choose the best school for their child and if a parent has a good reason, they should be able to move their child," said Yaklin, who founded the MSBLA to offer school board members an alternative to the establishment approach to education.
Andrew LeFevre, education task force director for the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) agrees.
"We need to move the whole system towards a market based approach, so that those school districts that seem to be losing kids because they're not doing well have an incentive to do better," said LeFevre. "And that those schools that are doing a good job to attract those students [get] the resources that come with them."
Publicly funded vouchers would be the best way to offer district-to-district school choice, said LeFevre. In fact, ALEC has developed model legislation for a statewide voucher system, as well as another bill that would establish a voucher system by dividing the state into smaller regions.
Among those criticizing such plans are the National Education Association and the American Association of School Administrators.
"We're not in favor of school choice," confirmed Barbara Knicely, information manager for the American Association of School Administrators.
Parents might lie about their residency because "there's a good school that you want to get your kid into, and you don't live in that area, and you can't afford or you don't want to pay the tuition," Knicely speculated.
But "we represent public school administrators and educators, and that's our focus-making sure that the kids that are attending public schools get what they need from the very precious education dollars that go around," Knicely explained.
Some states, regions and localities already have "suburban accords" that allow district-to-district and even state-to-state transfers, according to David Griffith, director of governmental and public affairs for the National Association of State Boards of Education.
"States have acknowledged that there's an interest in moving around," said Griffith. "Plus, for more than two decades we've had magnet schools and school assignment based on desegregation policy, so the notion of motion is not a novel one.
"Arkansas is well known for having a moderate ability to choose among public schools," he said.
"It just tends to be okay if it's government directed and not okay if it's initiated by parents," said Griffith.
Voucher supporters perhaps?
I was unaware that public schools charged tuition. Is this tuition charge for out-of-district students only?
Do they backcharge the cost of tuition to these parents if they find them using school services they were not eligible for?
Is the district going to be as aggresive in its pursuit of the children of illegal aliens? What a public relations scenario for the gov't school crowd!
At the time, Center was a much better school district. Now, it's a pretty bad one, but nowhere near as bad as the KCMO school district.
Mark
Most districts have "school choice" *within* district bounds, but most also limit that choice based on race.
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