School residency cheaters investigated

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

I was going to say that you should have stopped with the first sentence because it was the only thing even approaching reality in your entire post, but even that sentence was the dregs of PulledOutofMyAss.com.

I'll confess that even I didn't know what the Office of the State Superintendent of Education did until your bullshit post set off alarms. If you can read text for the amount of time that it took you to post your made-up rationale, you might come to the conclusion that OSSE's mission has several high-cost priorities in front of catching resident fraudsters.

I realize that, in the Age of Trump, I'm in the minority of American citizens who want to create more taxpaying citizens than mouth-breathing, hate-filled, criminally-minded people who couldn't hold a job with a gun to their heads BUT it has to be said with purpose and whatnot that the creation of said tax-paying citizens is the primary objective of OSSE and I'm fine with that. So fine, in fact, that I have no problem with them focusing on the tens of thousands of kids in my city of choice who have limited prospects of gaining or holding down a job that will actually pay taxes. Fuck whatever the federal government will actually come up with because our passel of brainiac lawmakers can't even figure out that preventing birth defects (or HEY, unwanted births) is a cost-saving measure - for all of us.

All of which is to say, that I, along with the majority of your tax-paying comrades, have no interest in paying for the extra resources required to police residency fraud. The funds cooped in penalty come no where near the the investment in resources. You would need an entire department, pay their salaries, benefits, administrative costs to chase down 3-5 families per school, per year. If you made it 10 families, the chances of you finding and capturing that much fraud actually goes down. There would be fewer people caught. Fewer still who would actually repay the debt.

The OSSE budget is not decided by the Chancellor. The mayor submits a budget proposal each year, and our sorry-ass City Council decides what the budget will be. If you tihnk that wastefulness and nepotism is just a character trait of the DC government, you're a naive little cog in politics much larger than your tiny existence. But if you're going to gripe about how it all works, at least take the time to understand how it all works.

In the scheme of things, I think we would be so much better off if more people could at least do that.

The poster you're responding to made so much more sense than your stream of consciousness. I can't decipher it.

DP, Yeah but that poster pulled all her made up thoughts out of the limp side of her arse. And the PP you think you are chastising made sense. Bottom line is that the chancellor does not allocate the resources and limp arse should have known that before she made all her other ridiculous statements.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's time to take this away from OSSE to investigate and hand it off to the feds and the US attorney to investigate and prosecute residency fraud. Some very public indictments for fraud and theft and services and civil suits for past due tuition should have at least some deterrent effect.

Um,. residency fraud is not within the parameters of the feds.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

I was going to say that you should have stopped with the first sentence because it was the only thing even approaching reality in your entire post, but even that sentence was the dregs of PulledOutofMyAss.com.

I'll confess that even I didn't know what the Office of the State Superintendent of Education did until your bullshit post set off alarms. If you can read text for the amount of time that it took you to post your made-up rationale, you might come to the conclusion that OSSE's mission has several high-cost priorities in front of catching resident fraudsters.

I realize that, in the Age of Trump, I'm in the minority of American citizens who want to create more taxpaying citizens than mouth-breathing, hate-filled, criminally-minded people who couldn't hold a job with a gun to their heads BUT it has to be said with purpose and whatnot that the creation of said tax-paying citizens is the primary objective of OSSE and I'm fine with that. So fine, in fact, that I have no problem with them focusing on the tens of thousands of kids in my city of choice who have limited prospects of gaining or holding down a job that will actually pay taxes. Fuck whatever the federal government will actually come up with because our passel of brainiac lawmakers can't even figure out that preventing birth defects (or HEY, unwanted births) is a cost-saving measure - for all of us.

All of which is to say, that I, along with the majority of your tax-paying comrades, have no interest in paying for the extra resources required to police residency fraud. The funds cooped in penalty come no where near the the investment in resources. You would need an entire department, pay their salaries, benefits, administrative costs to chase down 3-5 families per school, per year. If you made it 10 families, the chances of you finding and capturing that much fraud actually goes down. There would be fewer people caught. Fewer still who would actually repay the debt.

The OSSE budget is not decided by the Chancellor. The mayor submits a budget proposal each year, and our sorry-ass City Council decides what the budget will be. If you tihnk that wastefulness and nepotism is just a character trait of the DC government, you're a naive little cog in politics much larger than your tiny existence. But if you're going to gripe about how it all works, at least take the time to understand how it all works.

In the scheme of things, I think we would be so much better off if more people could at least do that.

Not too much money at all. All they need is a DCUM task force of angry volunteer parents willing to pour over databases. When I was looking at fraud cases for court filings, it would take an average of 2 hours per person to go through all of their public records to see if they were filing under fake names or repeated filings that had already been dismissed. Get 100 parents to volunteer 10 hours a week. = 500 students a week, 25,000 students a year checked. There are roughly 50,000 students (http://dcps.dc.gov/page/dcps-glance-enrollment). The project would go through all the students in two years. So no fraudulently enrolled student would be in longer than a year or so and it would probably take less time given that there are siblings in the same family.

Now, of course, there needs to be training and confidentiality agreements when dealing with confidential personally identifying information, since you would not want a parent "volunteer" stealing anyone's identity or financial information. But there are people hired in these positions all the time that do not abuse this trust.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Part 2: http://dailycaller.com/2016/07/05/rampant-fraud-means-even-govt-contractors-can-illegally-send-kids-to-dc-schools/

Damn. They blew up that lady's life.

Welp, she broke the law. Hundreds of others do too but she was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The house is not in her name. Did they find anything linking that child to that house. Actually, if the woman lives in DC, I hope she finds a good lawyer to sue for slander.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

I was going to say that you should have stopped with the first sentence because it was the only thing even approaching reality in your entire post, but even that sentence was the dregs of PulledOutofMyAss.com.

I'll confess that even I didn't know what the Office of the State Superintendent of Education did until your bullshit post set off alarms. If you can read text for the amount of time that it took you to post your made-up rationale, you might come to the conclusion that OSSE's mission has several high-cost priorities in front of catching resident fraudsters.

I realize that, in the Age of Trump, I'm in the minority of American citizens who want to create more taxpaying citizens than mouth-breathing, hate-filled, criminally-minded people who couldn't hold a job with a gun to their heads BUT it has to be said with purpose and whatnot that the creation of said tax-paying citizens is the primary objective of OSSE and I'm fine with that. So fine, in fact, that I have no problem with them focusing on the tens of thousands of kids in my city of choice who have limited prospects of gaining or holding down a job that will actually pay taxes. Fuck whatever the federal government will actually come up with because our passel of brainiac lawmakers can't even figure out that preventing birth defects (or HEY, unwanted births) is a cost-saving measure - for all of us.

All of which is to say, that I, along with the majority of your tax-paying comrades, have no interest in paying for the extra resources required to police residency fraud. The funds cooped in penalty come no where near the the investment in resources. You would need an entire department, pay their salaries, benefits, administrative costs to chase down 3-5 families per school, per year. If you made it 10 families, the chances of you finding and capturing that much fraud actually goes down. There would be fewer people caught. Fewer still who would actually repay the debt.

The OSSE budget is not decided by the Chancellor. The mayor submits a budget proposal each year, and our sorry-ass City Council decides what the budget will be. If you tihnk that wastefulness and nepotism is just a character trait of the DC government, you're a naive little cog in politics much larger than your tiny existence. But if you're going to gripe about how it all works, at least take the time to understand how it all works.

In the scheme of things, I think we would be so much better off if more people could at least do that.

Not too much money at all. All they need is a DCUM task force of angry volunteer parents willing to pour over databases. When I was looking at fraud cases for court filings, it would take an average of 2 hours per person to go through all of their public records to see if they were filing under fake names or repeated filings that had already been dismissed. Get 100 parents to volunteer 10 hours a week. = 500 students a week, 25,000 students a year checked. There are roughly 50,000 students (http://dcps.dc.gov/page/dcps-glance-enrollment). The project would go through all the students in two years. So no fraudulently enrolled student would be in longer than a year or so and it would probably take less time given that there are siblings in the same family.

Now, of course, there needs to be training and confidentiality agreements when dealing with confidential personally identifying information, since you would not want a parent "volunteer" stealing anyone's identity or financial information. But there are people hired in these positions all the time that do not abuse this trust.

This seems like a project that could easily and affordably be contracted to an outside vendor. Security contractors do this type of stuff all the time for the intel agencies and private companies.

I think the solution is to take away the authority from OSSE, which is rife with conflicts of interest and political hackery. Give the responsibility to check residency and investigate fraud to an outside vendor. Also provide the company a bonus with every residency cheater it finds (50% of one years' worth of DCPS tuition per child). I think we will suddenly find that DCPS has plenty of money.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Ugh. this is all about right wingers creating a new "welfare mom" for their racist pleasure. But more importantly it is a slam on DC for using "taxpayer dollars" as a way for Congress to sadistically stick it to DC for being a democratic stronghold and black-run (see also: refusal to fund Metro). With the ultimate purpose of fighting DC statehood and the additional Ds it would bring to the House and Senate.

Ugh, Metro is not a DC entity. Why do idiots from all political and racial cloths not understand that Metro is not a DC entity. The headquarters is in DC, but Metro has offices in MD and VA as well. It is operated by a BOD made up of VA, DC, and MD politicians and appointees. In the recent years, the BOD expanded and the feds added their appointees.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Part 2: http://dailycaller.com/2016/07/05/rampant-fraud-means-even-govt-contractors-can-illegally-send-kids-to-dc-schools/

Damn. They blew up that lady's life.

Welp, she broke the law. Hundreds of others do too but she was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The house is not in her name. Did they find anything linking that child to that house. Actually, if the woman lives in DC, I hope she finds a good lawyer to sue for slander.

What's the slander? It needs to be untrue in order to be slanderous. They said they can't find a record of her living in DC after 1997. They did find multiple Maryland addresses for he. They said her car was at the Capitol Heights house as early as 6 am.

I think it sucks to have your sh*t dragged out in public like this, but OSSE should do a better job of policing this if they don't want "reporters" doing it for them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's time to take this away from OSSE to investigate and hand it off to the feds and the US attorney to investigate and prosecute residency fraud. Some very public indictments for fraud and theft and services and civil suits for past due tuition should have at least some deterrent effect.

Um,. residency fraud is not within the parameters of the feds.

All crime in DC is handled by the "feds" in the sense that local DC prosecutors *are* AUSAs (i.e., federal employees).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Ugh. this is all about right wingers creating a new "welfare mom" for their racist pleasure. But more importantly it is a slam on DC for using "taxpayer dollars" as a way for Congress to sadistically stick it to DC for being a democratic stronghold and black-run (see also: refusal to fund Metro). With the ultimate purpose of fighting DC statehood and the additional Ds it would bring to the House and Senate.

You're running off the rails here (no pun intended). Metrorail was built to accommodate the needs of commuter post- white flight. Metrorail wasn't designed for efficient urban transport.

[Anonymous]

Not all cheaters are from PG County. I've heard of one at my kid's school from MoCo. Have also had a couple of parents ask me casually on the playground about enrolling their child (I live near the MD line). I just reply that unfortunately, only kids who live in DC can enroll.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Not all cheaters are from PG County. I've heard of one at my kid's school from MoCo. Have also had a couple of parents ask me casually on the playground about enrolling their child (I live near the MD line). I just reply that unfortunately, only kids who live in DC can enroll.

+1
I know of one former and 3 current cheaters from MoCo. The first was kicked off his MoCo football team for fighting so he enrolled in a DC Charter. The 3 current are also in a DC charter. Their mom works in DC and doesn't want to pay for daycare/aftercare.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's time to take this away from OSSE to investigate and hand it off to the feds and the US attorney to investigate and prosecute residency fraud. Some very public indictments for fraud and theft and services and civil suits for past due tuition should have at least some deterrent effect.

Um,. residency fraud is not within the parameters of the feds.

DCPS gets a ton of federal aid. Theft of services is basically misappropriating federal grant money intended for DC students, so yeah, it could be a subject of federal investigation. And, of course, the US Attorney is the local prosecutor with jurisdiction to enforce DC laws as well as federal ones. The point is, investigations need to be handed over to an aggressive investigator and enforcer, not the lackadaisical DC agency in charge of it now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ugh. this is all about right wingers creating a new "welfare mom" for their racist pleasure. But more importantly it is a slam on DC for using "taxpayer dollars" as a way for Congress to sadistically stick it to DC for being a democratic stronghold and black-run (see also: refusal to fund Metro). With the ultimate purpose of fighting DC statehood and the additional Ds it would bring to the House and Senate.

Ugh, Metro is not a DC entity. Why do idiots from all political and racial cloths not understand that Metro is not a DC entity. The headquarters is in DC, but Metro has offices in MD and VA as well. It is operated by a BOD made up of VA, DC, and MD politicians and appointees. In the recent years, the BOD expanded and the feds added their appointees.

Metro is not a DC entity, but its recent level of service and poor track record make it feel like one. Sometimes it seems like some of the old Marion Barry hacks who were fired by Mayors Williams and Fenty burrowed into Metro.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Residency fraud is a huge problem in DC schools, and anyone who says otherwise has his head in the sand. It's a shame that the race-baiting Daily Caller is the outlet that decided to take this on. I am all in favor of cracking down on cheaters, but these articles are really gross.

+1

[Anonymous]

Maybe the answer is simply to charge for before/aftercare except for documented FARMS families.