Districts check on nonresident students

PHOTOGRAPHER: Michael Goot

School districts across the area hire private investigators and require more documentation of residency to prevent parents from sending their children to schools where they don’t live.

People have a variety of reasons for attempting to deceive school officials including wanting to enroll their children in what they perceive as a safer or academically superior district.

Mohonasen school officials see about two or three cases a month of students who may not live in the Rotterdam district, according to Superintendent Kathleen Spring.

For the last several years, the district has hired Wayne Calder, Rotterdam’s retired deputy police chief and current Town Board member, to investigate these cases. For the 2011-12 school year, Calder will be paid a rate of $27.50 per hour. Last year he worked 130 hours for a pay of about $3,600. He worked 125 hours the year before, according to school officials.

Spring said parents in Schenectady, which shares a border with Mohonasen, Albany and other districts call or e-mail the district seeking to enroll their children for a variety of reasons.

“Their child is afraid in their school,” Spring said. “They feel like they are being bullied and ostracized.”

In nearby Schalmont, Superintendent Valerie Kelsey said the problem has increased in the last couple of years. The district hasn’t brought in any outside help but relies on existing staff to handle the cases. “They’re probably at least 10 a year,” she said.

Kelsey attributed the issue to parents wanting to send their children to a quality school with good programs. Schalmont ranked 11th in The Business Review’s annual survey.

“They see it as a safe school. If they can’t find housing here, they find another way to be here,” she said.

By contrast, Schenectady ranked 84th out of 85 in The Business Review survey, which is calculated based on test scores for language and reading, social studies, science, math and graduation rate.

The city school district has also been tagged by the state as a “persistently dangerous” school for high incidents of violence and its high school is also in restructuring mode with a 2009-2010 graduation rate of 59 percent.

The Albany school district ranked last.

rating influence

The Business Review’s rating does influence parents’ actions, according to Burnt Hills-Ballston Lake spokeswoman Christy Multer.

“I just found out my district is ranked at the bottom in the Business Review and I want my kids to go to your district,” Multer said parents will tell school officials.

Burnt Hills-Ballston Lake consistently ranks fifth or sixth. Consequently, Multer said people will go to great lengths in an effort to deceive the district, which does not accept tuition for nonresident students. Sometimes parents will list the address of the grandparents who live in the district and actually drop off their child at the grandparents’ house to be picked up by the bus.

“If you want to do that, you need to give legal custody to Grandma,” she said. “The children’s residence is where their children’s legal guardian is.”

The district has occasionally hired a detective when a bus driver told school officials that the residency did not seem accurate.

If a student is found not to be a resident of the district, Multer said the superintendent sends a notice to the parents and gives them two weeks’ notice that they will no longer be admitted to the school.

Multer said such cases are rare since the district in 2002 began requiring all parents to come to the district office to fill out forms and show three documents to the superintendent’s secretary to prove residency. These can be a utility bill to sent to their address, a copy of either a lease for rental property or contract for a house, driver’s license, automobile, insurance policy, bank account statement, voter registration, state tax return or property or school tax bill.

When this is completed, the parent will receive a residency ticket and be directed to the appropriate elementary school. Under the old system, Multer said parents just showed up to register where they thought their children would go and there was a consistent standard for amount of documentation required.

Sometimes, Multer said there are complicated situations where the parents split up and have shared custody. The district where the parent with primary custody lives is where the child will attend.

The exception is in cases of homeless students, who have an option of attending school in their former district or the new one.

If people have moved in with a relative who lives in the district, school officials will ask for a notarized letter that states this.

rely on tips

Schenectady City School District spokeswoman Karen Corona said that the district has its attendance supervisor, James Goyette, investigate cases if he receives a tip about a nonresident student or if a report card is sent back from the postal service as being an unknown address. He will also track down landlords to get information about where the student is actually living.

Also, the reverse is true. Goyette will inform other school districts if they receive information about someone living in Schenectady going to their schools.

“It would be their responsibility to confirm that address and follow up from their end,” she said.

In Burnt Hills-Ballston Lake, people do try to cheat the system.

“We do get people who lie,” she said. “Our goal of course is to do what’s best for the children but also to serve the taxpayers who will be paying the cost of these children’s education.”