Post by southsidesignmaker on Aug 4, 2011 7:32:24 GMT -6
www.chicagotribune.com/news/education/ct-met-school-residency-crackdown-08020110805,0,2203995.story
By Tara Malone and Lolly Bowean, Tribune reporters
August 5, 2011
As parents prepare to send their children back to school this month, many are digging out everything from mortgage statements to utility bills and apartment leases to prove they live in the public school district their children will attend.
Private investigators checked out thousands of families suspected of lying about their addresses last year as local school districts began clamping down on people who try to enroll their kids in schools their tax dollars don't support.
"With funding getting so tight, you have to be a little more diligent in making sure the kids the taxpayers are paying for are the ones enrolled in your district," said John Reiniche, assistant superintendent for business services for Orland School District 135.
The southwest suburban Orland Park district took a parent to court last spring after investigators determined his daughter attended a junior high school for two years even as the family resided 10 miles away in Blue Island. The father was convicted of providing false information in December in Cook County Circuit Court, and the district filed a civil suit in March seeking to recoup $24,208 in tuition costs.
For the first time, Oak Park Elementary School District 97 required that all 3,700 families — those new to the suburb and those who have lived there for years — verify their residencies before students enroll for the new school year.
Calumet School District 132 requires that parents confirm their addresses every fall and checks them four times during the school year, officials said, while Community High School District 218 in Oak Lawn occasionally posts school security officers at bus stops to see if students arrive from Chicago.
"There's a part of me that says, 'God bless those parents who find a way to get their kids to a better school,'" said District 218 Superintendent John Byrne. "I'm not unsympathetic. But it does raise the cost of educating a child here."
The emotionally entangled issue gained national attention this year when an Akron, Ohio, mother was jailed for nine days after a jury convicted her of tampering with official records to falsely enroll her two daughters in a better, safer school in the district where her father resides.
The case revealed the lengths that some parents take to shield their children from low-performing schools, said Gary Orfield, co-director of the Civil Rights Project at the University of California at Los Angeles.
"Any parent faced with sending their kid to a dropout factory that is dangerous will try almost anything to change their kid's future," Orfield said. "This is a serious educational and moral crisis."
Although school districts are reacting to a budget crisis and trying to protect their local tax dollars, Orfield said, enforcing residency restrictions often keeps poor and minority students locked into underperforming schools.
"It's a fact that those who need good schools the most are segregated into the most inferior schools in our country," he said.
And the economic turmoil that left many parents without work, forced home foreclosures and drove some families to move in with relatives has exacerbated the number of residency disputes.
"Every Illinois child has a constitutional right to attend a public school that is tuition-free. Generally then, the question is where?" said Laurene Heybach, director of the Law Project of the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless.
In Illinois, the state school code determines residency as the "regular fixed nighttime abode." When issues arise, state officials urge districts to enroll the student first and ask questions later.
Skirting attendance boundaries has been practiced for years across the Chicago region's smorgasbord of districts, but school officials say some parents have grown more brazen in their efforts, presenting fake driver's licenses, short-term leases and mismatched utility bills.
Many schools turn to private investigators for help in rooting out the boundary-hoppers by tailing parents, staking out homes, and tracking comings and goings.
Private investigator William Beitler, CEO of Channahon-based National Investigators Inc., describes parents who drop their child at the bus stop as early as 6 a.m. to avoid detection, or parents who pay $500 for a one-day lease so they can enroll their student in a better neighborhood school.
The company last year investigated 7,926 school residency cases — all of them in the Chicago region.
"You just don't see or hear about it outside the northeast Illinois region," said Illinois State Board of Education spokesman Matt Vanover. "It's the volume of districts that are up there."
On a recent morning, parents trickled into the Orland School District 135 offices to register their children for the new school year, a few of them with documents in hand.
Rama Atieh didn't mind showing her lease, driver's license and utility bill to enroll her two daughters in elementary school. After all, she moved to Orland Park in part for the solid public schools, and she had all the proper documentation to get her girls enrolled.
"It's appropriate," she said. "They need to know we live here."
At the same time, she said she feels for parents who don't have that luxury.
"I have kids and I want them in a really good school," she said. "I can see where outside (parents) are coming from. It's not fair; everybody should get a good education and shouldn't be prosecuted for trying to get into a good school."
So far, 200 families in Oak Park School District 97 have not provided the necessary documents to register their kids this year, so the district called those parents and guardians as a gentle reminder in recent weeks, said human resources director Trish Carlson. She said she does not expect this will become an annual rite of registration.
"The goal here is to assure the superintendent, the school board and this community that Oak Park children are attending Oak Park schools … not to cripple a family with a $12,000 bill," Carlson said.
The state school code caps the tuition that can be charged to students who do not lawfully reside within a school district at 110 percent of the per-child cost required to operate schools and educate students during the previous year.
In DuPage County, West Chicago School District 33 checks the residency records for new students and, on occasion, charges tuition to families who enrolled their child without lawfully residing in the district. But Superintendent Ed Leman said the district rarely pursues it.
"We have not chased them for tuition. It would be fairly fruitless," Leman said. "If they had the resources, they wouldn't have done what they did anyway."
Will County's Valley View Public School District 365U began an annual residency check last year, while District 218 in Oak Lawn has required for years that families confirm their addresses every fall.
Still, the southwest suburban district has grown more vigilant, Byrne said. Mail that is returned from a student's address often spurs an investigation. Students who do, in fact, live beyond the district's boundaries may complete the semester but are not permitted to enroll anew.
"I think they fool us more than we figure it out," Byrne said.
Homewood School District 153 officials long required that parents provide three documents verifying an address in order to enroll their kids in school each year.
But as the economy soured and more families moved in with relatives, district officials noticed more families lacked the requisite forms, spokeswoman Shelley Peck said. Now, local homeowners who opened their door to a family must sign an affidavit to enroll the students for class.
A mother of six children and stepmother of three more, Evergreen Park parent Debbie Izzo knows to dig out a mortgage statement every fall when she registers her kids for class. Surrounded on three sides by Chicago, Evergreen Park School District 124 has required that families confirm their addresses for years. Izzo views it as another bit of the back-to-school season.
"If they ask me for a utility bill, bam! There it is," she said, laughing. "It's just sort of ingrained in my brain now."
tmalone@tribune.com
lbowean@tribune.com
By Tara Malone and Lolly Bowean, Tribune reporters
August 5, 2011
As parents prepare to send their children back to school this month, many are digging out everything from mortgage statements to utility bills and apartment leases to prove they live in the public school district their children will attend.
Private investigators checked out thousands of families suspected of lying about their addresses last year as local school districts began clamping down on people who try to enroll their kids in schools their tax dollars don't support.
"With funding getting so tight, you have to be a little more diligent in making sure the kids the taxpayers are paying for are the ones enrolled in your district," said John Reiniche, assistant superintendent for business services for Orland School District 135.
The southwest suburban Orland Park district took a parent to court last spring after investigators determined his daughter attended a junior high school for two years even as the family resided 10 miles away in Blue Island. The father was convicted of providing false information in December in Cook County Circuit Court, and the district filed a civil suit in March seeking to recoup $24,208 in tuition costs.
For the first time, Oak Park Elementary School District 97 required that all 3,700 families — those new to the suburb and those who have lived there for years — verify their residencies before students enroll for the new school year.
Calumet School District 132 requires that parents confirm their addresses every fall and checks them four times during the school year, officials said, while Community High School District 218 in Oak Lawn occasionally posts school security officers at bus stops to see if students arrive from Chicago.
"There's a part of me that says, 'God bless those parents who find a way to get their kids to a better school,'" said District 218 Superintendent John Byrne. "I'm not unsympathetic. But it does raise the cost of educating a child here."
The emotionally entangled issue gained national attention this year when an Akron, Ohio, mother was jailed for nine days after a jury convicted her of tampering with official records to falsely enroll her two daughters in a better, safer school in the district where her father resides.
The case revealed the lengths that some parents take to shield their children from low-performing schools, said Gary Orfield, co-director of the Civil Rights Project at the University of California at Los Angeles.
"Any parent faced with sending their kid to a dropout factory that is dangerous will try almost anything to change their kid's future," Orfield said. "This is a serious educational and moral crisis."
Although school districts are reacting to a budget crisis and trying to protect their local tax dollars, Orfield said, enforcing residency restrictions often keeps poor and minority students locked into underperforming schools.
"It's a fact that those who need good schools the most are segregated into the most inferior schools in our country," he said.
And the economic turmoil that left many parents without work, forced home foreclosures and drove some families to move in with relatives has exacerbated the number of residency disputes.
"Every Illinois child has a constitutional right to attend a public school that is tuition-free. Generally then, the question is where?" said Laurene Heybach, director of the Law Project of the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless.
In Illinois, the state school code determines residency as the "regular fixed nighttime abode." When issues arise, state officials urge districts to enroll the student first and ask questions later.
Skirting attendance boundaries has been practiced for years across the Chicago region's smorgasbord of districts, but school officials say some parents have grown more brazen in their efforts, presenting fake driver's licenses, short-term leases and mismatched utility bills.
Many schools turn to private investigators for help in rooting out the boundary-hoppers by tailing parents, staking out homes, and tracking comings and goings.
Private investigator William Beitler, CEO of Channahon-based National Investigators Inc., describes parents who drop their child at the bus stop as early as 6 a.m. to avoid detection, or parents who pay $500 for a one-day lease so they can enroll their student in a better neighborhood school.
The company last year investigated 7,926 school residency cases — all of them in the Chicago region.
"You just don't see or hear about it outside the northeast Illinois region," said Illinois State Board of Education spokesman Matt Vanover. "It's the volume of districts that are up there."
On a recent morning, parents trickled into the Orland School District 135 offices to register their children for the new school year, a few of them with documents in hand.
Rama Atieh didn't mind showing her lease, driver's license and utility bill to enroll her two daughters in elementary school. After all, she moved to Orland Park in part for the solid public schools, and she had all the proper documentation to get her girls enrolled.
"It's appropriate," she said. "They need to know we live here."
At the same time, she said she feels for parents who don't have that luxury.
"I have kids and I want them in a really good school," she said. "I can see where outside (parents) are coming from. It's not fair; everybody should get a good education and shouldn't be prosecuted for trying to get into a good school."
So far, 200 families in Oak Park School District 97 have not provided the necessary documents to register their kids this year, so the district called those parents and guardians as a gentle reminder in recent weeks, said human resources director Trish Carlson. She said she does not expect this will become an annual rite of registration.
"The goal here is to assure the superintendent, the school board and this community that Oak Park children are attending Oak Park schools … not to cripple a family with a $12,000 bill," Carlson said.
The state school code caps the tuition that can be charged to students who do not lawfully reside within a school district at 110 percent of the per-child cost required to operate schools and educate students during the previous year.
In DuPage County, West Chicago School District 33 checks the residency records for new students and, on occasion, charges tuition to families who enrolled their child without lawfully residing in the district. But Superintendent Ed Leman said the district rarely pursues it.
"We have not chased them for tuition. It would be fairly fruitless," Leman said. "If they had the resources, they wouldn't have done what they did anyway."
Will County's Valley View Public School District 365U began an annual residency check last year, while District 218 in Oak Lawn has required for years that families confirm their addresses every fall.
Still, the southwest suburban district has grown more vigilant, Byrne said. Mail that is returned from a student's address often spurs an investigation. Students who do, in fact, live beyond the district's boundaries may complete the semester but are not permitted to enroll anew.
"I think they fool us more than we figure it out," Byrne said.
Homewood School District 153 officials long required that parents provide three documents verifying an address in order to enroll their kids in school each year.
But as the economy soured and more families moved in with relatives, district officials noticed more families lacked the requisite forms, spokeswoman Shelley Peck said. Now, local homeowners who opened their door to a family must sign an affidavit to enroll the students for class.
A mother of six children and stepmother of three more, Evergreen Park parent Debbie Izzo knows to dig out a mortgage statement every fall when she registers her kids for class. Surrounded on three sides by Chicago, Evergreen Park School District 124 has required that families confirm their addresses for years. Izzo views it as another bit of the back-to-school season.
"If they ask me for a utility bill, bam! There it is," she said, laughing. "It's just sort of ingrained in my brain now."
tmalone@tribune.com
lbowean@tribune.com