Dist. 220 ousts 6 students over residency, but they can finish year

Barrington Unit District 220 board members voted this week to disenroll six students after learning their families live outside the district, but agreed to leave them in class until the end of the school year.

The rare move comes after the district conducted a full investigation into the residency of the four families involved. Warnings usually are enough for nonresident students to leave district schools, representatives of District 220 and Schaumburg Township Elementary District 54 said.

"I've been on the board over seven years and this is the first time I recollect ever having to take this action," District 220 board President Brian Battle said. "My guess is that every school district has residency issues every year and it's commonly dealt with through other means."

District 220 administrators made the even more rare recommendation to allow the affected students to remain through the end of the school year. At any other time, the students' removal likely would have been immediate, Superintendent Tom Leonard said.

"We want to follow the rules, but we don't want to be barbaric to a student who's in the last two weeks of the school year," Leonard said.

Nevertheless, the families of the students will receive a letter asking them to pay the prorated cost of their students' enrollment in the district this year. In District 220, the yearly operational cost per pupil is approximately $14,000. In the case of the disenrolled students, they are believed to have been enrolled for nearly the entire school year, Leonard said.

The board's vote on three of the affected families was unanimous, but for the fourth Board Member Cara Richardson voted against disenrollment. Richardson could not be reached for comment Wednesday and Battle said he could not explain why that case would have been viewed differently.

Battle said the confusing nature of Illinois school district boundaries sometimes leads to honest mistakes, but he could not comment on whether that was the case for any of the six students disenrolled this week.

District spokesman Jeff Arnett said the decision primarily affected students claiming to live in the Carpentersville area of the district. But evidence of nonresidency is not unique to a particular area, he added.

District 54 spokeswoman Terri McHugh said nonresidency is most commonly discovered in the spring, when registration information for the next school year is mailed to parents, but returned by the post office when it's discovered the addressees don't live where they claim.

Letters then are sent home with students informing parents that questions about their residency have been raised. They are offered the opportunity to prove their residency or request a hearing.

Hearings in District 54 are rare, McHugh said.

One scenario in which residency issues arise is following a divorce when a student lives with one parent but uses the other's address for school, McHugh said. The decision often comes down to where the student spends the night, and on rare occasions, full investigations have been required to establish that.

Sometimes, a resident or parent will raise the question to the school district, Leonard said, requiring the district to look into the matter.

"It's kind of the law," Leonard said. "If we found out about something and we chose to ignore it, we really wouldn't be fulfilling our legal duty."

As is the case of the recently disenrolled students, an investigation does not necessarily determine which district a nonresident student belongs, only that it isn't District 220, Leonard said.

<div class="infoBox">

<h1>More Coverage</h1>

<div class="infoBoxContent">

<div class="infoArea">

<h2>Stories</h2>

<ul class="links">

<li><a href="/story/?id=382031">Constable: Who pays price for crossing line to 'steal' education? <span class="date">[5/20/10]</span></a></li>

</ul>

</div>

</div>

</div>