If the people who are supposed to enforce a particular law fail to do anything, to whom do I turn: The state’s Attorney General? My state representative?
Over the past 18 months, I have uncovered three out-of-town residents sneaking their child into my town’s public school system. Each pretend to be renting a room in my town. The parents drive them to/from my high school every day from their real home. Using a GAAP figure of fourteen thousand dollars per student per year, they have taken about $112,000 worth of resources. The town selectmen tell me to take it up with the school committee. The school committee doesn’t even acknowledge my correspondence. Short of creating a scene at the high school graduation this Friday, got any suggestions?
May I ask why it bothers you so much that a few children are getting a different (better?) education? Of all the egregious behavior out there, this hardly seems worth your effort.
You said “uncovered.” Does that mean you have actual, physical proof? Nobody’s gonna be interested in your gossip unless you can back it up. If you do, I suppose contacting the AG and the state rep, as you suggested, would be in order, but don’t be surprised if they ignore you as well.
The impact on your life, or that of your child, is so close to nil as to make no difference. These parents care about their children, just like you do - and no one goes to this sort of trouble unless they just don’t have a better option for making sure their kids get a good education.
Besides which, the kids themselves are, well, kids. You mentioned graduation, which suggests they may be about to leave - do you really want to trash the future prospects of ordinary kids? Especially since, if the parents care this much about their education, I bet you they do as well.
I find a good rule of thumb is: Don’t make anyone else’s life harder than it already is, unless you absolutely have to. You don’t have to. So don’t.
I suggest that you do protest as that is your right as a tax paying citizen to protest unfair use of your tax dollars. These children from out of town used up resources that would (not should) have be allocated to the students of that school district. The ones whose parents carried the burden of paying taxes for there education. People care about there children’s education and school levies are a huge deal. To skirt the payment of taxes by living in another district and sending your kids to the better funded district is fraud, plain and simple. If those kids parents really wanted there kids to have a better education they should have been willing to pay for it and not teach them that it is OK to scam the system.
The impact these kids had on the school system is very, very slight - they were just a few out of hundreds, maybe thousands. (I don’t know the size of this school, after all). It’s less than a pinprick. But going after these kids and their parents, particularly if they’re close to graduation, could do real damage to their lives. It’s cruel and pointless. Let it go.
Around here what usually happens is that a group of similar-minded taxpayers petition the state auditor to do a financial audit of the school system, which would presumably uncover the ghost rentals. If the school committee failed to correct, you could petition the attorney general to prosecute the school system. Don’t be surprised if the process takes forever, though.
Also don’t be surprised if everyone involved isn’t already aware of what’s happening. It’s not unusual for even the most rule-bound school bureaucracies to overlook where poor/homeless/abused students actually live, so that they can continue to attend the same school and have some continuity in their lives.
A classmate of my daughter was basically thrown out by her family when she was 17, and spent the last two years of high school sleeping on whatever friend’s couch was available that night. No one said anything when that couch happened to be outside the district.
Mr. Excellent, If they are attending the school under false pretenses they are stealing tax dollars. It doesen’t matter if they are doing it to help their kids get a better education, any more then if they robbed you to get tuition for their kids.
In an age where school programs and personnel such as arts, music, janitors and teachers are routinely scrapped because of budget shortages you can’t just let these types of things go. I am all for kids getting an education; couldn’t they have gotten one in the district they were living in? :dubious:
A single shopper stealing one box of food from a grocery store also has just a very, very slight impact; the burden imparted to other shoppers who foot the bill for that theft is miniscule. And going after that shoplifter could do real damage to his life.
Explain to me why we don’t tolerate shoplifting, and yet we should tolerate theft of services from a school district?
Now for a GQ instead of GD answer.
Schools I’ve worked for typically have a person such as a dean or asst principal that will go and investigate including surprise home visits. Let’s say the school does not want to take it on, then I would follow up with the person responsible for residency issues at the district office. But let’s say no one at the district cares because they want the money from the state. Then if there is a school levy in your county, you could try to go through your county taxing agency and report it to them.
In my experience, school districts like to get as many students as possible, because that number determines the amount of state and federal funding that comes in. The district is probably gaining slightly from this criminal enterprise. The marginal cost of two more students is probably less than the additional funding they’ll qualify for as a result of their attendance.
Probably not - if they could have, they would. When people do things like this, it’s almost always because the local schools are terrible and they can’t afford private schools or gain admission to a charter school. I mean, why else would you do this?
Because, generally speaking, shoplifting is something that people do on a lark; it’s not that damaging, but there really isn’t a great reason for most shoplifters to do it, so we’re not particularly sympathetic to them. We expect people to refrain from getting their kicks at the expense of other people.
On the other hand, you’ll have to work very hard to find a prosecutor who’d be eager to prosecute a Jean Valjean - a shoplifter resorting to theft out of pure desperation. “If I don’t do this, my family will starve!” Given a choice between violating the law in a (relatively) harmless way and letting one’s loved ones suffer, most of us would break the law.
If these kids are in the school district improperly, it’s almost certainly because their parents are desperate for them to get a good education, and don’t have other options; as I pointed out above, there really isn’t any other reason to do this. I’m a lot more sympathetic towards innocent kids and impoverished parents making hard choices out of necessity than I am towards a random shoplifter grabbing a candy bar from the checkout line - aren’t you?
The GQ answer is - ultimately the school board is responsible for enforcing the rules. You raise a stink with the elected representatives who decide how to spend your tax dollars.
If they are in fact getting state or federal money under false pretences, I would think your next step would be alerting the appropriate audit offices, and let them know you’ve informed the school board of the situation and they did nothing. Then talk to your state representative and federal congresscritter. Write letters to the local papers.
Of course, there’s the possibility that as long as the student attended the rules for fed and state support don’t care if they are residents, just that they actually attended. The money would go to School A or School B either way.
Why make a scene at the graduation? If you want other taxpayers to know, there are a lot of ways to do so. Throwing a wet blanket over a happy celebration isn’t the time. A protest at grad ceremon won’t change anything; do you seriously (???) think the principal is going to stop mid-ceremony and say “oops, better not give you this diploma until we check that story?” No. If you don’t shut up, you’ll be hauled away for causing a disturbance, and the rest of the folks will be able to have a chuckle around the punch bowl about the cranky old fool.
Getting anyone to listen to you seriously gets a lot harder when they all say, “that’s the goof who spent the night in jail for disrupting the grad ceremony.”
In the end, if nobody wants to listen to you, there’s the distinct possibility that this stuff happens all the time and they don’t really give a shit.
Or maybe they thought the evidence you provided wasn’t enough to trigger an investigation, or maybe they didn’t want to be associated with someone that habitually stalked students, or maybe they did check it out and some of your facts turned out to be wrong or incomplete.
The world is unfair. One shouldn’t allow unfairness to persist just because the world is unfair…and so I can sympathise with the OP.
However, you can’t have perfection. You can’t fight every battle. One should use ones effort to find the important unfairnesses. Not all unfairnesses are equal.
A couple of parents sneaking their kids into your school system because theirs sucks is …not… screaming on my radar of unfairness. Yes, they are taking…but why? They probably cannot move into the district…they are stuck where they are or the school district you live in is much wealthier and so much better than theirs. Maybe they have issues with their kids in their system (bullying or something) and so want their kids to be in a different school but just cannot pick up and move (housing crash anyone?). Maybe rent in your area is too damn high to keep riffraff out.
The thing is…you are making a stink over some parents and a few kids who…want their kids to have access to a better/more well funded school system and are willing to go through much effort to carry this off.
THE HORROR!!! The UNFAIRNESS!!!
Dude…lighten up. Seriously. You are going to turn into that old grumpy guy that everyone dislikes and makes fun of.
Seriously…do you really want to plant your flag on this hill and die to defend it? To be known as that mean spirited crotchity old coot that screams about kids getting an education and wants to kick them out? Do you REALLY want to be that guy?
There is so much unfairness in this world. Find something worthy and fight for that.
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In an answer to the OP’s actual question - how do you get people to do their job and enforce the law when they don’t? - Yea…I understand the frustration. I have experienced that many times in my life. It’s tough.