School Fraud- Cap Hill

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For the one millionth time, it’s explicitly allowed under DC policy to move out of bounds and keep your school enrollment until the terminal grade. It’s not a violation of anything and it’s not up to the principal’s discretion anymore. For a city full of lawyers, DCUM is pretty intentionally obtuse on this policy.

+1000. Give it a rest already, the policy is clear.

For the millionth time, we are talking about residency fraud here, not people who move out of their school boundary within the district.

You are not allowed to MOVE TO MARYLAND and keep your spot in a DC public school (without telling the school and paying tuition, assuming a spot is still available to you, which it might not be at a school that can fill classes with IB students). I don't know if you are a lawyer or not, but you should work on your reading comprehension skills.

Re-read page 8, friend. Both were discussed as being violations.

This thread is about residency fraud. It is specifically about people who live in Maryland full time but send their kids to DC schools by lying about their residence. People keep saying "oh but what about this other thing that is not residency fraud? that's okay so why are you complaining?"

We aren't complaining about that. We are complaining about residency fraud. Not housing insecure kids, not people who live IB and then move in the city, just people who live in MD and send their kids to DC schools. Stop throwing up straw men.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For the one millionth time, it’s explicitly allowed under DC policy to move out of bounds and keep your school enrollment until the terminal grade. It’s not a violation of anything and it’s not up to the principal’s discretion anymore. For a city full of lawyers, DCUM is pretty intentionally obtuse on this policy.

+1000. Give it a rest already, the policy is clear.

For the millionth time, we are talking about residency fraud here, not people who move out of their school boundary within the district.

You are not allowed to MOVE TO MARYLAND and keep your spot in a DC public school (without telling the school and paying tuition, assuming a spot is still available to you, which it might not be at a school that can fill classes with IB students). I don't know if you are a lawyer or not, but you should work on your reading comprehension skills.

Re-read page 8, friend. Both were discussed as being violations.

This thread is about residency fraud. It is specifically about people who live in Maryland full time but send their kids to DC schools by lying about their residence. People keep saying "oh but what about this other thing that is not residency fraud? that's okay so why are you complaining?"

We aren't complaining about that. We are complaining about residency fraud. Not housing insecure kids, not people who live IB and then move in the city, just people who live in MD and send their kids to DC schools. Stop throwing up straw men.

You weren’t, but there’s a full page of discussion from others that were equating the two. I agree boundary rules are irrelevant to this discussion, and hopefully by our exchanges others will finally appreciate the distinction and stop bringing up one as equivalent to the other.

In sum: moving OOB, not a violation; actual boundary fraud, a violation but not enforced; residency fraud, a violation that is inconsistently enforced. Yes? Can we agree and move on now, please?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For the one millionth time, it’s explicitly allowed under DC policy to move out of bounds and keep your school enrollment until the terminal grade. It’s not a violation of anything and it’s not up to the principal’s discretion anymore. For a city full of lawyers, DCUM is pretty intentionally obtuse on this policy.

+1000. Give it a rest already, the policy is clear.

For the millionth time, we are talking about residency fraud here, not people who move out of their school boundary within the district.

You are not allowed to MOVE TO MARYLAND and keep your spot in a DC public school (without telling the school and paying tuition, assuming a spot is still available to you, which it might not be at a school that can fill classes with IB students). I don't know if you are a lawyer or not, but you should work on your reading comprehension skills.

Re-read page 8, friend. Both were discussed as being violations.

This thread is about residency fraud. It is specifically about people who live in Maryland full time but send their kids to DC schools by lying about their residence. People keep saying "oh but what about this other thing that is not residency fraud? that's okay so why are you complaining?"

We aren't complaining about that. We are complaining about residency fraud. Not housing insecure kids, not people who live IB and then move in the city, just people who live in MD and send their kids to DC schools. Stop throwing up straw men.

Well said.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:As someone at a school that appears to have a lot of residency fraud, I think part of the problem is that it has a serious impact on the school's ability to build community. Our school has a lot of IB kids but also a large portion of students that definitely live in MD. It's an open secret. I know some of these families and I get why they do it, and as others on the thread have explained, often situations are complicated. But also -- it's still fraud. These are not families who used to live in bounds and now live out of bounds in DC. They don't still have a parent living in DC and definitely not IBs. Some of them still own property or have family members near the school, but neither the kids nor the parents live in these houses and don't pretend to. Yes, many of them lived IB for a long time and grew up in the area and went to the school themselves. I get it and there are obviously gentrification and racial issues at play and I'm actually not judging any of these families. My kid is friends with some of their kids, and their kids are great. Many are very committed to the school and very active in activities and booster events.

But it still impacts the overall culture of the school. The fact that it's an "open secret" is a problem -- everyone knows what is going on and no one is saying anything but it's absolutely an elephant in the room, especially in situations where the school interacts with the neighborhood, coordinating for events or doing fundraisers. It creates awkwardness. It also undermines a major reason many of us choose to attend this school over a charter. We want to be in a neighborhood school, for our kid to attend school with neighbors and to have a sense of community in our neighborhood. So it was surprising and disappointing when our kid's first true school friend turned out to live in PG county. We're not going to tell on this family, who we love. But it's not what we thought we were getting into with this school and it was sad to discover it. No casual after school playdates or bumping into each other in the neighborhood on the weekend. And we think it will be hard for these kids to maintain their friendship due to the distance and the underlying issues.

Someone upthread said it's not fair for families to complain about residency fraud when they will just abandon the school for charters or private school. But I think this comment ignores how these issues are related. We do sometimes discuss moving to a charter, specifically to try and find a greater sense of community because our current school has a disjointed culture due to residency fraud. There are basically two communities -- the IB families and the MD families. They mix, but they are also distinct, and it's weird.

I'm not trying to deprive any child of an education. But it's kind of crazy we've all just accepted this as the way it has to be. That attitude is endemic in DCPS and I think it leads to a lot of the apathy and resentment in the system. It's not good.

Discovering that ONE of your kid's friends lived in MD crushed your sense of neighborhood and community? If this the case, then you're waaaay to fragile...

And also, how exactly is the community culture "disjointed" by (alleged) residency fraud?

[Anonymous]

FWIW.....

Our kids were at a Hill cluster school a few years ago, but have since moved on. For the entire time they were there, we lived IB in the school neighborhood (7-8 min walk away). And for the entire time they were there, we both had MD plates on our cars. We paid a handsome fee for garage parking spaces in our bldg and so decided to keep our MD tags until they expired. We drove our kids to school every day and I'm sure there were just as many busybody morons complaining about this issue then, as there are now. Why did we drive them when we lived so close? Because we had another child in a private school that WAS NOT close by, so we had to drive that child to school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:FWIW.....

Our kids were at a Hill cluster school a few years ago, but have since moved on. For the entire time they were there, we lived IB in the school neighborhood (7-8 min walk away). And for the entire time they were there, we both had MD plates on our cars. We paid a handsome fee for garage parking spaces in our bldg and so decided to keep our MD tags until they expired. We drove our kids to school every day and I'm sure there were just as many busybody morons complaining about this issue then, as there are now. Why did we drive them when we lived so close? Because we had another child in a private school that WAS NOT close by, so we had to drive that child to school.

FWIW… Your plates were illegal unless you’re talking about less than one school year. Yes there are anecdotal reasons for individual MD plates, but probably 50% of them represent sketchiness and 25% are outright fraud.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:FWIW.....

Our kids were at a Hill cluster school a few years ago, but have since moved on. For the entire time they were there, we lived IB in the school neighborhood (7-8 min walk away). And for the entire time they were there, we both had MD plates on our cars. We paid a handsome fee for garage parking spaces in our bldg and so decided to keep our MD tags until they expired. We drove our kids to school every day and I'm sure there were just as many busybody morons complaining about this issue then, as there are now. Why did we drive them when we lived so close? Because we had another child in a private school that WAS NOT close by, so we had to drive that child to school.

FWIW… Your plates were illegal unless you’re talking about less than one school year. Yes there are anecdotal reasons for individual MD plates, but probably 50% of them represent sketchiness and 25% are outright fraud.

So many assumptions here....how do you know my plates were illegal??? Like seriously, you don't have a clue as to what our personal or professional circumstances were at the time, so why would you fast forward to "instant illegality" with nothing to base it on? And lets say for the sake of argument that our plates were illegal...what difference does it make with regard to this thread? Plates possibly illegal...DCPS enrollment totally legal. And which school did you get the 50% sketchy/25% fraud data from?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:FWIW.....

Our kids were at a Hill cluster school a few years ago, but have since moved on. For the entire time they were there, we lived IB in the school neighborhood (7-8 min walk away). And for the entire time they were there, we both had MD plates on our cars. We paid a handsome fee for garage parking spaces in our bldg and so decided to keep our MD tags until they expired. We drove our kids to school every day and I'm sure there were just as many busybody morons complaining about this issue then, as there are now. Why did we drive them when we lived so close? Because we had another child in a private school that WAS NOT close by, so we had to drive that child to school.

“We were too lazy to walk 8 minutes and were committing insurance fraud so residency cheaters don’t exist.”

[Anonymous]

What about those folks who move out of DC, but keep their DC tags?……

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:MYOB

Lol. NP but this is ridiculous. This is OP's business. If people from outside the city are committing residency fraud to take spots in her IB school, and her children are unable to attend as a result, that is 100% her business. Don't be obtuse.

OP, I have mixed feelings about this because I do think some percentage of the cars with Maryland tags doing drop off are not residency fraud -- it's kids from divorced homes where one parent lives in PG county, or a grandparent or other caretaker who lives in Maryland doing drop off to help parents with challenging commutes or work schedules. So I don't like assuming that just because I see one kid get out of a car with Maryland tags, that family is committing fraud.

But yes, the sheer volume is concerning to me. I don't think you can explain away dozens of cars with Maryland tags doing drop off with these explanations. Schools in DC are so challenging as is, and stuff like this erodes faith in the system and sows distrust among school communities.

If it is grandparent / babysitter / divorce - wouldn't you see similar patterns at other elementary schools? Why would it be centralized to Maury vs the neighboring elementary schools? What is unique there

What's unique about Maury is its convenience for people commuting into DC.

That’s not unique. Bunker Hill on Michigan NE is a thoroughfare for commuters from MD. I don’t go there but suspect there are a lot of MD tags there too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:FWIW.....

Our kids were at a Hill cluster school a few years ago, but have since moved on. For the entire time they were there, we lived IB in the school neighborhood (7-8 min walk away). And for the entire time they were there, we both had MD plates on our cars. We paid a handsome fee for garage parking spaces in our bldg and so decided to keep our MD tags until they expired. We drove our kids to school every day and I'm sure there were just as many busybody morons complaining about this issue then, as there are now. Why did we drive them when we lived so close? Because we had another child in a private school that WAS NOT close by, so we had to drive that child to school.

FWIW… Your plates were illegal unless you’re talking about less than one school year. Yes there are anecdotal reasons for individual MD plates, but probably 50% of them represent sketchiness and 25% are outright fraud.

So many assumptions here....how do you know my plates were illegal??? Like seriously, you don't have a clue as to what our personal or professional circumstances were at the time, so why would you fast forward to "instant illegality" with nothing to base it on? And lets say for the sake of argument that our plates were illegal...what difference does it make with regard to this thread? Plates possibly illegal...DCPS enrollment totally legal. And which school did you get the 50% sketchy/25% fraud data from?

Did you have a reciprocity sticker?

[Anonymous]

Whether the plates were legal or not, I think it's a good example of how there are many reasons people could have legit residency and MD plates. We all know residency fraud is an issue, but it's an issue with all public services in DC because of the porous borders with our neighboring jurisdictions and there's no simple answer (like just enforce more). I hope the neighborhood sleuths get it out of their system here and can be polite to the actual families they're encountering at drop off and pick up.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This thread is about residency fraud. It is specifically about people who live in Maryland full time but send their kids to DC schools by lying about their residence. People keep saying "oh but what about this other thing that is not residency fraud? that's okay so why are you complaining?"

We aren't complaining about that. We are complaining about residency fraud. Not housing insecure kids, not people who live IB and then move in the city, just people who live in MD and send their kids to DC schools. Stop throwing up straw men.

You're complaining about residency fraud you SUSPECT based on the number of MD plates you see at a school of more than 500 kids with nearly 100 staff. You don't know anything for certain. And how exactly is your life being adversely impacted, by any of this BTW?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:FWIW.....

Our kids were at a Hill cluster school a few years ago, but have since moved on. For the entire time they were there, we lived IB in the school neighborhood (7-8 min walk away). And for the entire time they were there, we both had MD plates on our cars. We paid a handsome fee for garage parking spaces in our bldg and so decided to keep our MD tags until they expired. We drove our kids to school every day and I'm sure there were just as many busybody morons complaining about this issue then, as there are now. Why did we drive them when we lived so close? Because we had another child in a private school that WAS NOT close by, so we had to drive that child to school.

FWIW… Your plates were illegal unless you’re talking about less than one school year. Yes there are anecdotal reasons for individual MD plates, but probably 50% of them represent sketchiness and 25% are outright fraud.

So many assumptions here....how do you know my plates were illegal??? Like seriously, you don't have a clue as to what our personal or professional circumstances were at the time, so why would you fast forward to "instant illegality" with nothing to base it on? And lets say for the sake of argument that our plates were illegal...what difference does it make with regard to this thread? Plates possibly illegal...DCPS enrollment totally legal. And which school did you get the 50% sketchy/25% fraud data from?

Because in the circumstances you describe, your plates were almost certainly illegal and given the self-righteous indignation in your post, you almost certainly would have mentioned it if there was a specific reason they weren't.

[Anonymous]

And many DC plates dropping kids at MCPS schools.
Patents/guardians do what is needed to get their kids needed services.