School residency cheaters investigated

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I work at a DCPS, and the amount of residency fraud is incredible. Students don't bother to hide it and neither do parents. I don't work at a highly coveted DCPS either, and don't think the quality of education would be worse in PG County. It's about convenience for a lot of parents.

Then do your job, report, investigate, and dismiss the kids from school. But don't advocate and consign the stalking of children.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Honestly, I do believe there is residency fraud. However, I believe this reporter out right lied in this article. How many people would stop and share their family situations with a stranger? Would any of you? And he states that he pulled tax records among other things to determine their lack of residency. Who gave them the names to pull? How many people would share their names with a stranger standing on the street asking questions.

You don't need a name if you have an address.

+1

They followed these people to their home. Once you have the address, you can pull all sorts of property and tax records from the District and MD county websites. Then once you have a name, you can cross-reference it with property in the District. They can also then look up marriage and divorce records to establish the household make-up.

My guess is that these parents didn't willingly volunteer information. More likely is that they were ambushed by these reporters with rhetorical questions - "Why do you live in MD and send your child to school in DC? Are you paying tuition to DCPS? Can you confirm that you are Joe Smith that works at the Department of Labor?" - that the reporters already knew the answers to. Using public records, you can easily figure out with 95% certainty if someone is a cheater. If these parents work for the government, they're even dumber - all their salary info is public record.

So why doesn't OSSE do this level of investigation?

The Chancellor does't give them the resources. There's a lot of solidly middle class and UMC families that would get caught up in the investigations. These people are fellow church goers and relatives of DC pols, business folks, and bureaucrats. And there is certainly a very strong element that folks who left the District but grew up here still have "rights" to their old block and former schools. Lots of messy inter-personal relationships that just make it easier to ignore the problem.

Plus, DCPS is primarily spending Federal government money. The more kids in the system, the more DCPS pulls from Congress. They have every incentive to keep headcount high.

Finally, I think there is a feeling that kids in PG County are getting shafted by the MD state government. District pols feel the need to protect those kids and families by offering them District resources.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Honestly, I do believe there is residency fraud. However, I believe this reporter out right lied in this article. How many people would stop and share their family situations with a stranger? Would any of you? And he states that he pulled tax records among other things to determine their lack of residency. Who gave them the names to pull? How many people would share their names with a stranger standing on the street asking questions.

You don't need a name if you have an address.

+1

They followed these people to their home. Once you have the address, you can pull all sorts of property and tax records from the District and MD county websites. Then once you have a name, you can cross-reference it with property in the District. They can also then look up marriage and divorce records to establish the household make-up.

My guess is that these parents didn't willingly volunteer information. More likely is that they were ambushed by these reporters with rhetorical questions - "Why do you live in MD and send your child to school in DC? Are you paying tuition to DCPS? Can you confirm that you are Joe Smith that works at the Department of Labor?" - that the reporters already knew the answers to. Using public records, you can easily figure out with 95% certainty if someone is a cheater. If these parents work for the government, they're even dumber - all their salary info is public record.

How do you know it was their home. How did they verify it was their home. How did they cross-match to confirm that who they followed to a particular place was the same person on the property tax. I mean who gave them the original name? If I followed you to your place of residence, without knowing your name, how can I be certain that I followed the person whose name is on the tax records. You're just a Nancy Doe I followed, but the name on the tax records state Suzy Homemaker.

Once you have a license plate number you can get the name the car is registered to.

Once you have the address the publicly available tax records will tell you who pays the taxes on the property.

If those match you are onto something. Then a review of DC property tax for that name (or either name if they don't match) will give you more info.

It isn't that hard to do even as a faux investigative reporter.

I just went to DC DMV online and was unable to find my registered vehicle. Therefore, no name available. DH has an outstanding parking ticket, so I was able to find his once I went to pay tickets.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Imagine if they had one of the directories from LT...

Well if I was illegally placing my child in a school, I certainly would not sign the consent form giving out my information. That just doesn't make sense for them to openly place their names, addresses, and email addresses in the school directory.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am extremely skeptical about the quality and motivation of Daily Caller investigative reporting, but I have to say, it does sound like a pretty severe problem and like they did actual (appropriate) reporting. It's not "stalking". But I'm not sure about the quality of the reporting. For example, how they describe L-T as

"in a mostly white neighborhood along a commuter route that runs from Prince George’s County to federal buildings downtown.

The school is almost entirely black and government statistics indicate that few of the students live in the neighborhood. Poor test scores have left neighborhood parents feeling they can’t use their own school, and must pay for private education or enroll their children in a more distant public school."

I don't think that accurately represents the L-T demographics, the current reputation of L-T, or the legitimate OOB system. It also seems to be trying to drive a pretty ugly racial/class wedge.

What's the commuter route from MD to L-T? The neighborhood demographics of L-T is not predominantly white. What am I missing in this awful reporting. There are so many lies or misinformation, such as in-state tuition to any state school, one has to wonder what the blogger got right.

Ward 6 was of 2010, 49% white, 41% black (it was majority black in 2000). The trend continues as Home values near LT start at 500k.

If you ever came over to the Hill on a weekday morning, you would notice the large volume of MD plated cars speeding through on MD Ave., PA Ave., C & H Streets, coming from Route 50, NY Abe, Bladensberg, 295, etc.

These parts of the article are absolutely true.

The article states that the area is all white, and the Black kids are all from Maryland. So where should the 41% of the Black kids attend school. And what's stopping the 49% of white kids from attending their inbound school. The author basically stated that white folks can't send their kids to school with all those black kids. The horror.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I read the comments to the article. This article was intended to be race bait for Daily Caller readers and they reliably bit on to it.
It's terrifying, frankly

DCUM readers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Honestly, I do believe there is residency fraud. However, I believe this reporter out right lied in this article. How many people would stop and share their family situations with a stranger? Would any of you? And he states that he pulled tax records among other things to determine their lack of residency. Who gave them the names to pull? How many people would share their names with a stranger standing on the street asking questions.

You don't need a name if you have an address.

+1

They followed these people to their home. Once you have the address, you can pull all sorts of property and tax records from the District and MD county websites. Then once you have a name, you can cross-reference it with property in the District. They can also then look up marriage and divorce records to establish the household make-up.

My guess is that these parents didn't willingly volunteer information. More likely is that they were ambushed by these reporters with rhetorical questions - "Why do you live in MD and send your child to school in DC? Are you paying tuition to DCPS? Can you confirm that you are Joe Smith that works at the Department of Labor?" - that the reporters already knew the answers to. Using public records, you can easily figure out with 95% certainty if someone is a cheater. If these parents work for the government, they're even dumber - all their salary info is public record.

So why doesn't OSSE do this level of investigation?

The Chancellor does't give them the resources. There's a lot of solidly middle class and UMC families that would get caught up in the investigations. These people are fellow church goers and relatives of DC pols, business folks, and bureaucrats. And there is certainly a very strong element that folks who left the District but grew up here still have "rights" to their old block and former schools. Lots of messy inter-personal relationships that just make it easier to ignore the problem.

Plus, DCPS is primarily spending Federal government money. The more kids in the system, the more DCPS pulls from Congress. They have every incentive to keep headcount high.

Finally, I think there is a feeling that kids in PG County are getting shafted by the MD state government. District pols feel the need to protect those kids and families by offering them District resources.

How do you know this? Or is it speculation?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I read the comments to the article. This article was intended to be race bait for Daily Caller readers and they reliably bit on to it.
It's terrifying, frankly

I wish I hadn't gone back to read the comments.

The hatred is getting out of control. And yes, frightening.

I'd like to get a picture of these reporters along with their license plates posted here and at every DC school.

So would I. More importantly, I would like to know where they live and snap pictures of their children and post all over the Internet.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Honestly, I do believe there is residency fraud. However, I believe this reporter out right lied in this article. How many people would stop and share their family situations with a stranger? Would any of you? And he states that he pulled tax records among other things to determine their lack of residency. Who gave them the names to pull? How many people would share their names with a stranger standing on the street asking questions.

You don't need a name if you have an address.

+1

They followed these people to their home. Once you have the address, you can pull all sorts of property and tax records from the District and MD county websites. Then once you have a name, you can cross-reference it with property in the District. They can also then look up marriage and divorce records to establish the household make-up.

My guess is that these parents didn't willingly volunteer information. More likely is that they were ambushed by these reporters with rhetorical questions - "Why do you live in MD and send your child to school in DC? Are you paying tuition to DCPS? Can you confirm that you are Joe Smith that works at the Department of Labor?" - that the reporters already knew the answers to. Using public records, you can easily figure out with 95% certainty if someone is a cheater. If these parents work for the government, they're even dumber - all their salary info is public record.

So why doesn't OSSE do this level of investigation?

Because the lied or strongly embellished. Do you really think one or two reporters followed hundreds of cars and parked in residences overnight. Yeah right. And I have Great Lake front property Florida, without any concerns for alligators.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I work at a DCPS, and the amount of residency fraud is incredible. Students don't bother to hide it and neither do parents. I don't work at a highly coveted DCPS either, and don't think the quality of education would be worse in PG County. It's about convenience for a lot of parents.

Great! Someone with actual knowledge rather than uninformed opinions. Can you give any more information?

Do you actually know of specific cases? I'd think the problem is that there are a bunch of suspicious cases, of which some are fraud and some are not, and it's difficult to identify a specific case as fraudulent.

If you can identify specific cases, I'm curious whether you are reporting them (http://osse.dc.gov/service/investigation-and-residency-fraud). If so, do you know what happens? If not, is it because you don't think it's a real problem, or do you think that reporting wouldn't be effective?

I agree with previous posters that this seems to be a real and substantial problem, but the hostile approach approach taken by the reporters is counterproductive.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Honestly, I do believe there is residency fraud. However, I believe this reporter out right lied in this article. How many people would stop and share their family situations with a stranger? Would any of you? And he states that he pulled tax records among other things to determine their lack of residency. Who gave them the names to pull? How many people would share their names with a stranger standing on the street asking questions.

You don't need a name if you have an address.

+1

They followed these people to their home. Once you have the address, you can pull all sorts of property and tax records from the District and MD county websites. Then once you have a name, you can cross-reference it with property in the District. They can also then look up marriage and divorce records to establish the household make-up.

My guess is that these parents didn't willingly volunteer information. More likely is that they were ambushed by these reporters with rhetorical questions - "Why do you live in MD and send your child to school in DC? Are you paying tuition to DCPS? Can you confirm that you are Joe Smith that works at the Department of Labor?" - that the reporters already knew the answers to. Using public records, you can easily figure out with 95% certainty if someone is a cheater. If these parents work for the government, they're even dumber - all their salary info is public record.

So why doesn't OSSE do this level of investigation?

The Chancellor does't give them the resources. There's a lot of solidly middle class and UMC families that would get caught up in the investigations. These people are fellow church goers and relatives of DC pols, business folks, and bureaucrats. And there is certainly a very strong element that folks who left the District but grew up here still have "rights" to their old block and former schools. Lots of messy inter-personal relationships that just make it easier to ignore the problem.

Plus, DCPS is primarily spending Federal government money. The more kids in the system, the more DCPS pulls from Congress. They have every incentive to keep headcount high.

Finally, I think there is a feeling that kids in PG County are getting shafted by the MD state government. District pols feel the need to protect those kids and families by offering them District resources.

Good Lord, you just pulled all of this crap out of your ass. First, The middle class families, and definitely the UMC families in PG send their kids to parochial and private schools. They have the money and wouldn't waste their time in DCPS, as they deem it inferior. The MC seek out tuition assistance, and the UMC simply write a check. Second, DC is spending DC dollars. DC send more to the Feds than they receive back. Third, where are you getting your data that MD is shafting PG Cty. More what in the world would make you think DC pols care?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The article -- with an approach that may seem extreme -- shows that the many, many of the kids in question are not in delicate family situations.

The problem never gets addressed because everyone fears, understandably, doing harm to kids in vulnerable situations.

But that fear is what allows a huge amount of exploitation -- which is what the article is trying to show by its "icky stalking" of two-parent families.

At what point is the abuse bad enough that some action has to be taken despite the risks of needlessly investigating a valid situation?

I think this is really on point. Many of us knew about the fraud, but worried the kids were in need - so we didn't speak up. Now this "article" (and I use that term loosely) is making me (and maybe others) wonder if it is just a lot of people taking advantage of the system.

same w/ welfare

And you know very little about programs like SNAP and TANF.

Actually, This American Life and Planet Money.

But we digress...

And you know very little about social security disability and 'crazy' checks.

SSDI is not "welfare" and harder to collect than you think. But I'm sure Fox News or Ted Cruz told you otherwise.

Actually, This American Life and Planet Money.

But we digress...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm not OP but I don't see why parents who are approached by reporters can't honestly answer basic questions about their residency. And if people are making excuses (like the L-T principal and the poster on here who keeps defending residency cheaters) that explain away why they have MD license plates, why fault the investigators who followed these tax cheaters home?

I'm a DC resident (with DC plates), but I'm going to side with the parents here. If a strange person pulled up to me while I had my kids with me and wanted to know where I lived, I'd be a bit angry too. I'm sure these "reporters" didn't have any press credentials as this a more of a blog, then USAToday or WaPo.

I'm all for taking this information and investigating (as I do not want MD residents in our schools) but I think the way it was handled is gross.

Agreed. Let some stranger roll up to my kids and I, taking pictures and demanding my residence info?

As a DC parent, I have reported a few MD license plates when I can get a name of a parent who speeds past us, almost hits my kids and me in the cross walk to pull up in front of a school and then curse out the security guard when he tells them they are driving too fast. Unrelated to my reporting, there have been 3 kids who left my kids' classes due to not living in D.C. But given the divorce rate and custody issues between other parents and grandparents, the lines are not so bright
But I wonder if a parent with weekend custody in D.C. can enroll a kid in D.C.?

Yes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The school is almost entirely black and government statistics indicate that few of the students live in the neighborhood. Poor test scores have left neighborhood parents feeling they can’t use their own school, and must pay for private education or enroll their children in a more distant public school.

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2016/07/04/investigation-md-residents-ripping-off-dc-schools-while-admins-refuse-to-address-it/#ixzz4DYsNU91D

Basically she is arguing that there are too many Black children at the school and the good white folks in the neighborhood won't send their kids to the neighborhood school. Therefore, clean out those blacks, so the whites who can already attend the school will be more comfortable in attending.

There you go again, playing the race card. The last refuge of scoundrels. People should be very interested in cleaning out those fraudsters.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm not OP but I don't see why parents who are approached by reporters can't honestly answer basic questions about their residency. And if people are making excuses (like the L-T principal and the poster on here who keeps defending residency cheaters) that explain away why they have MD license plates, why fault the investigators who followed these tax cheaters home?

I'm a DC resident (with DC plates), but I'm going to side with the parents here. If a strange person pulled up to me while I had my kids with me and wanted to know where I lived, I'd be a bit angry too. I'm sure these "reporters" didn't have any press credentials as this a more of a blog, then USAToday or WaPo.

I'm all for taking this information and investigating (as I do not want MD residents in our schools) but I think the way it was handled is gross.

Agreed. Let some stranger roll up to my kids and I, taking pictures and demanding my residence info?

As a DC parent, I have reported a few MD license plates when I can get a name of a parent who speeds past us, almost hits my kids and me in the cross walk to pull up in front of a school and then curse out the security guard when he tells them they are driving too fast. Unrelated to my reporting, there have been 3 kids who left my kids' classes due to not living in D.C. But given the divorce rate and custody issues between other parents and grandparents, the lines are not so bright.

But I wonder if a parent with weekend custody in D.C. can enroll a kid in D.C.?

As long as the custody is joint custody, DC does not discriminate.

Don't believe it to be true. We are divorced. Nobody asked anything about custody or where the kid sleeps. I'm the mother in his birth certificate and i showed showed my paychecks and registration in other years. That's all.
I'm sure his father could've done the same had we wanted DC to go to his IB school. You might have to prove custody if not parents on birth certificate.