Boundary Crossings: A Matter of Residency - inter-school district student enrollment

School Administrator, Nov, 2000 by Kimberly Reeves

School districts clamp down on illegally enrolled students, while some states encourage interdistrict transfers

Greg Moore fills two distinct roles in his unusual job with the Riverview Gardens School District on the northern edge of St. Louis. He's both a one-member welcome committee and the chief law enforcer.

School district officials admit Moore's job description is "schizophrenic." Half of the former FBI agent's time is spent seeking out students who should be enrolled in the Riverview Gardens schools. He drops in on apartment complex managers and local business owners, puts up posters and talks with parents who live in this growing blue-collar community. He balances enrollment among a dozen district schools, shifting students among campuses to stretch classroom space in the school district's aging facilities.

The other half of Moore's time as the district's coordinator of

residency/enrollment is spent investigating allegations of what the Riverview Gardens school system calls "educational larceny." That means seeking out the families who have their children enrolled in Riverview Gardens schools but shouldn't. Superintendent Chris Wright calls Moore's work for the school district a regrettable but necessary choice for the property-poor community.

"If I had my preference, I'd educate every child," Wright says. "I think that it's a great credit to the school district that we have so many families seeking out the Riverview Gardens school district for their children. But we have a fiscal responsibility to our community to ensure that the children attending our schools have a legitimate and legal right to do so."

In other words, Riverview Gardens can t afford the bond issue these illegally enrolled students are bringing upon the school district. Taxpayers in this inner-ring suburb of 7,200 students already carry bond debt that has added a dollar to the school district's tax rate. Enrollment has grown by 25 percent in the five years Wright has been there, even though few new houses have been put on the ground in her working-class neighborhood.

"Our community has been more than generous in their willingness to upgrade our facilities, but there's a point where that must stop," Wright says.

Uncommon Tactics

Illegally enrolled students are like a dull toothache for most superintendents. Few school leaders would deny students cross attendance boundary lines, but most school systems have been unwilling to dedicate the time and resources to ferret out those students.

"We don't want to be Big Brother. We have so many other problems we need to tackle," says Joseph Donzelli, a spokesman for the sprawling Broward County Public Schools based in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. "We've got student achievement and funding problems and construction issues and making sure we have the best teachers we can get. Certainly we will investigate and confirm whether a child enrolls under false pretenses, but we have more than a quarter of a million students enrolled here."

Ironically, as enrollment barriers in many public schools are dropping, more school districts are actively pursuing illegally enrolled students. Public outcry and a growing tax pinch are taking away the school district's prerogative to overlook the problem. Several state legislatures have demanded over the last five years that school districts put out the border crossers--especially those who cross state lines-or face the loss of state funding.

The measures school districts use to catch students are sometimes unconventional, if not radical. One New Jersey school district offered a $100 reward for those who turned in a non-resident student. Districts in Illinois are pursuing claims against parents--and even sometimes teachers--for back tuition on illegally enrolled students. One school district outside Cleveland was willing to take parents to court.

In Riverview Gardens, the residential addresses of more than 200 families were investigated when Moline Acres Elementary School opened two years ago. Another 175 families were examined last year. The school district estimates that Moore's work has saved about $1.1 million annually in unnecessary expenditures.

"It's not a pleasant job, but I would say it was absolutely worth it," says Moore, who has gone so far as to put a suspected student's house under surveillance to confirm residency. "When you have to bring them in and then put them out, it's not a good feeling, but someone has to do it."

Unpopular Pursuits

For much of the holiday season of 1996, assistant city attorney Rick Wiegand was both the most reviled and respected man in Euclid, Ohio. He was the topic of every radio talk show and the star of the evening television newscasts. Taxpayers hailed him on the street and called his house to congratulate him. Educators, Wiegand says today, "hated me."

Wiegand was the city attorney willing to send a mother of a kindergarten student to jail for illegally enrolling her child in the Euclid City School District. A Euclid municipal judge sentenced the mother to 90 days in jail and forced her to pay restitution to the school district for falsifying an affidavit to enroll her child in Euclid, a district neighboring her own. The woman was charged with "theft of services."