Schools Crack Down on Boundary Hopping

Marshall, Hill's mother, says her daughter didn't want to pull her children out of Greece schools after the family recently lost its home and had to move to Rochester. Marshall says that Hill's children live with her, including two who are currently attending Greece schools, one of whom is an "A-B student." "I just don't understand why they are singling out my daughter," Marshall says. "They say that if you don't send your kids to school you'll get into trouble, but now if you send them to school you get into trouble."

Paul Teske, a professor of education policy at the University of Colorado-Denver, says laws that promote school choice, such as No Child Left Behind, may embolden district hopping by parents who are desperate to send their kids to a better school. But the reality, says Teske, is that NCLB's school choice provisions have done little to help families living in cities where most schools are underperforming and the few good ones are at capacity.

In the Fremont Unified School District in California, there is stiff competition to get into Mission San Jose High School (No. 60 on the U.S. News America's Best High Schools list). Aware that some parents will do anything to help their children go to the school, the district has become savvier about investigating fraud. It created an anonymous tip line and can even impose a $5,000 fine on any parent who is a residency scofflaw. The district's caseworkers also conduct routine residency checks at the beginning of the year. "Sometimes, we will go into the house where a child is supposed to live with a grandmother and if we find no child's bedroom, that usually is a dead giveaway [that there is fraud]," says Valerie Williams, director of pupil services, who says the number of students removed for hopping boundaries each year is small. Although the district can slap offenders with a fine, Williams acknowledges that no parent has been taken to court, because the legal costs would exceed the benefit to the district.

That hasn't stopped other districts from throwing the full weight of the law at parents. In Atlanta, a mother of three faced up to 80 years in prison after being charged with 16 counts of falsifying school documents so that her kids, all honor students, could attend schools in the city, rather than in her home district of Cobb County, Ga. School officials said the mother used false addresses, including one for a condo that was vacant. A jury found her not guilty last May. In January, police in New Haven, Conn., arrested a couple and accused them of sending their children to city schools under false pretense. The couple, who lost an appeal to keep their children in the district, might now have to pay back the cost of their children's education, at $10,000 per pupil.

Greece officials appear to have so far succeeded in sending a strong message to other residency scofflaws. Within a week of Hill's arrest, more than 50 calls poured into the district's hotline about possible students who didn't belong in various schools. Ten families quickly pulled their kids out, fearing prosecution, says Degnan, the district's residency investigator. In a neighboring district, another woman from Rochester made a court appearance on charges that she, too, lied about where she lived so that her daughter could enroll in one of the district's schools. "The law is pretty straightforward," Degnan says. "If you lie about where you live, bad things will happen to you."