Schools Crack Down on Boundary Hopping

The case of Yolanda Hill, a mother from Rochester, N.Y., who faces criminal charges that she lied about where she lived so that four of her children could attend schools in the suburbs, is renewing attention on a problem that plagues school districts nationwide. It's known as "boundary hopping." Parents will use a false address to enroll their children in schools they think are better or safer than those in their home district.

Officials with the Greece Central School District in New York say Hill used her mother's address in the district to register her kids there, even though they actually lived in Rochester. Hill's mother, Mary Marshall, says her daughter only wanted her kids to receive a good education and didn't know she was breaking the law. Now her daughter could go to prison. She has been charged with third-degree grand larceny and first-degree offering a false instrument for filing, both felonies. Her case goes to a grand jury in March. Hill's attorney could not be reached for comment for this article.

While student boundary hopping is not uncommon, it's rare for school districts to seek criminal charges against parents. Hill's case suggests that districts are getting fed up. From California to Connecticut, school boards are adopting tougher measures to stop "sneak-ins," who, they say, drain precious resources from the district's proper student body, especially now, when dollars are scarce. Many districts spend tens of thousands of dollars each year to purge these students from their enrollment lists. Their strategies include setting up anonymous tip lines, hiring private investigators who will stake out bus stops and follow students to their real homes, and blanketing the community with bulletins that warn about the consequences of submitting a fake address. In Broward County, Fla., for example, the school board agreed to put up posters this year that read, "False address can lead to arrest." Student registration forms now warn parents that lying about where they live can cost them their homestead tax exemption or even lead to a perjury charge and jail time.

For Broward and other top-performing school systems, a lot is at stake. Taxpaying residents of those districts say it's not fair to subsidize the education of a child whose parents don't pay taxes in the district. They worry about the impact on class sizes, test scores, and programs such as special education. Sometimes, this community outrage does prompt tougher enforcement of residency rules. In 2006 in Grosse Pointe, Mich., a wealthy suburb of Detroit, about 3,000 parents who signed a petition pressured the school board to spend $8,000 to reregister all 9,000 students in the district. At the end of its investigation, the district found only 40 nonresident students.

Jay Worona, general counsel to the New York State School Boards Association, says districts have a legal obligation to enforce residency requirements and investigate fraud, and it's also in their interest to make examples out of parents who break the law. "If a district was to gain a reputation of not being particularly vigilant, there might be an invitation to other parents [living outside the district] to go ahead and bring your child in," Worona says.

Authorities in Greece, a large suburb east of Rochester, arrested Hill, 33, on February 9. Greece public schools serve roughly 13,000 students and consistently post strong scores on state tests. In contrast, the Rochester City School District serves more than twice as many students, most of whom live below the federal poverty line, and has a poor record of performance, especially at the high school level. Kevin Degnan, a former law enforcement officer who now works for the Greece school district, conducted the investigation that led to Hill's arrest. He spent mornings and afternoons staking out bus stops and the house in Greece where Hill said she and her children lived. Degnan alleges that only the kids' grandmother lived at the house. According to Degnan, the children live with Hill in Rochester and commuted to Greece every morning, waiting at bus stops and then heading to their respective schools. District officials estimate the cost of educating Hill's four children since the beginning of the school year at $28,000. Degnan says the district had no choice but to seek charges against Hill, who he says was given several warnings. "I feel sorry for the children," Degnan says. "I don't feel sorry for the parents."

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."