Latest on Ellington
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Anonymous
No. The story is that Ellington staff was letting people cheat. "The D.C. inspector general and attorney general are investigating how much Ellington administrators knew about the deceptive enrollments." https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/families-accused-of-residency-fraud-re-enroll-at-duke-ellington-school-of-the-arts/2018/07/18/184b4b70-8a99-11e8-8aea-86e88ae760d8_story.html?utm_term=.8d9b5fc8eba3 |
Anonymous
But the registrar is supposed to check to make sure all documents provided to prove residency align with the guideline provided by OSSE. Addresses match across all documents provided. Documents provided have the same name. The name of the person completing the forms / enrolling the child and the name on the documents are the same. If the registrar did this, Ellington would not have been initially flagged for materials that were "irregular". Once the schools was flagged for exceeding the threshold it triggered a full audit - and got us to where we are today. Every other family in DCPS / DCPCS is required to provide this. It is a minor requirement and Ellington Families need to do the same. AND if - there are fraudulent documents - address is a commercial property - that is a different story. |
Anonymous
The story MIGHT be they were letting people cheat. |
Anonymous
It’s important to investigate rules violations no matter how minor. Residency requirements, cheating on tests, drug sales and beefing all lower the bar all impact a schools culture and learning ethos. |
Anonymous
Well, that would be super-hard to prove. Across DC public schools, incompetence is part of the job description. Unless a witness squeals, the front office's incompetence and criminal intent will look about the same. |
Anonymous
Welcome back to the DCPS/DCPCS forum, beefing poster. You’ve been dropping the beefing schtick lately. So glad you are including it again so we know it’s really you. |
Anonymous
This is, in fact, NOT what happened at all. The entire school was investigated, and EVERY Ellington parent's information was seized and nearly all families were asked to produce information that was NOT included in what they presented to Ellington. So in nearly all the cases of people who got letters, it was ADDITIONAL information (or the lack of it) that triggered the finding. OSSE' rules allow them to check social media, electronic records, Lexus Nexus and kids of things to look for inconsistencies. So this is absolutely not a case of the registrar not checking documents. |
Anonymous
From this column. Ridiculous. "...David Greene is one of the parents accused of residency fraud. “OSSE concluded that we are still residents of Maryland based on the fact that we owned a property there from 2008-2014,” he said in a letter to three D.C. Council members. The investigators told him that his documentation of D.C. residence appeared to be false because “the address on the documentation is a home owned by a senior receiving the homestead deduction.” Greene said he is the renter, not the owner, of the property. Greene said the sale of his Maryland home in 2014 is a matter of public record. He has had a valid D.C. driver’s license since 2015. He is registered to vote in the District. He got a D.C. jury summons and did his service in June. He has been paying D.C. taxes since 2015. He is confident that he will be cleared, but what about parents who don’t have his advantages? “I am really worried that there are Ellington families for whom this is and will continue to be an overwhelming burden,” he said. “This investigation not only seems flawed and unfair, it seems mean.”" |
Anonymous
The audit takes a sample of what the registrar has checked. If the sample fails, then the whole school is investigated. |
Anonymous
So he is not renting a legal rental unit - and wonders why there is confusion. |
Anonymous
That's on his landlord, not him. How would he even know that his landlord was still claiming the homestead exemption? Dude did jury duty -- that's proof enough for me (no one would do jury duty if they didn't live in the city), and can produce tax returns. |
Anonymous
That may be true, but in Ellington's case the audit and the investigation were separate and distinct efforts. One did not trigger the other. And the audit only found 56 families, all but 2 of whom were cleared two months after the audit results were released. |
Anonymous
| Tic-tock...squawk, squawk, CHOP! |
Anonymous
I rented for a couple of years. I've no way of knowing whether my landlord was a tax cheat. That is NOT on the renter. |