Who pays price for crossing line to 'steal' education?

You are convinced that your kid's best shot at a quality education is to send him or her to a private school, but you can't afford the $12,000 tuition. Would you feel justified stealing money from your neighbors until you came up with enough to pay for your child's education?

Of course not. Everybody knows stealing is a crime.

So is knowingly enrolling your child in a public school when the kid doesn't live in that school district.

Stealing $12,000 from your neighbors is a Class 2 felony, almost always prosecuted and punishable by a sentence of between three and seven years in prison. Stealing $12,000 from a taxpayer-funded school by lying about where your child lives is a Class C misdemeanor, which carries a maximum penalty of a $1,500 fine and 30 days in the county jail but often is not even pursued.

Today's Daily Herald features a story about Barrington Area Unit District 220 accusing six students from four families of attending a district school when they had no legal right to do so. The district will let the kids finish the school year, but somebody must foot their bill.

We may feel empathy for people who violate rules to get the best education for their children in the same way we empathize with a dad who steals a loaf of bread so his kid won't go hungry. Parents sometimes falsely say children live with relatives in other school districts in attempts to land them in better schools. Sometimes, they say the kids live at an address that turns out to be business.

The Daily Herald archives have only a handful of those stories. The Illinois State Board of Education doesn't keep records of how many students try to attend the wrong school. But judging from the amount of documentation (mortgage statements, insurance policies, utility bills and the like) that suburban schools require during registration, the problem is widespread.

A respected school district such as Schaumburg Township Elementary District 54 must have dozens of these cases each year.

"Not dozens. More than that," says Terri McHugh, community relations director for District 54. "It is a problem. At a number of our schools, we find out kids are living somewhere else."

How widespread is this practice?

"We probably don't even know because it's only a problem if we know," McHugh says. She adds that school districts just want kids enrolled in the correct schools, and may not find it fiscally sound to pursue criminal charges or sue for reimbursement from people who are entitled to a public education at some other school.

Some of these cases can be attributed to ignorance instead of an intentional scheme to cheat the school district, McHugh adds. Families go through divorces, moves and guardianship issues, and may not understand what that means for the children's schooling.

"Nine out of 10 times, parents are contacted and say, 'Oh, all right. Sorry,'" McHugh says.

Parents moving into Naperville Unit District 203 sometimes enroll their children before they actually move into the district.

"If you aren't a resident within 60 days of the first day of school, we actually charge people fees," says Melea Smith, director of communications for District 203, noting that the goal is to properly enroll children, not collect the prorated fees of about $60 per child per day.

"A lot of times parents will just call us because they really like a program," McHugh says. "They'll say, 'How can we get in?' We'll say, 'You can't. You have to live in the district.'"

One of the main ways improper residency cases come to a school's attention is through first-class mailings that are returned to the school when the name on the envelope doesn't match the address. But there also are high-tech tools that catch irregularities, such as software that shows every address in a district "so you can see if it's a house or a filling station," Smith says. "It's getting more and more scientific, especially in this economy when every dollar counts."

Schools need to protect their taxpayers' investments.

"Our tax dollars are paying for this," McHugh says. Schools often get tips about nonresident students from residents in the community.

"If you are paying taxes, you're not happy if the person next door is somehow doing an end run around the process," Smith says.

Even if the intentions are noble, stealing from a school district is wrong. But it is comforting that so many people apparently realize that a good public school education is a nice thing to have.

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<li><a href="/story/?id=382052">Dist. 220 ousts 6 students over residency, but they can finish year <span class="date">[5/20/10]</span></a></li>

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