School Fraud- Cap Hill

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We’re at Brent and we don’t see MD plates dropping off. We obviously have a bit of a boundary fraud problem, with families who own second homes on the Hill using them to enroll at Brent but not living in them. DCPS had to pick it’s battles meaning that cracking down on residency fraud is the focus, not boundary fraud as long as DC withholding is being done. I think this is the right approach.

Where do the families actually live?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:At a school I worked at in DC, the registrar actually got in trouble for residency fraud along with two paraprofessionals.

Wow, that’s SO DC.

Did the person actually get charged and pay the fine? Did the students continue to attend?

[Anonymous]

Just say you’re trying to figure out where the black kids are coming from! SMH wypipo!!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We’re at Brent and we don’t see MD plates dropping off. We obviously have a bit of a boundary fraud problem, with families who own second homes on the Hill using them to enroll at Brent but not living in them. DCPS had to pick it’s battles meaning that cracking down on residency fraud is the focus, not boundary fraud as long as DC withholding is being done. I think this is the right approach.

Where do the families actually live?

If their second home is on the hill where do they actually live? They must live there a decent amount if they are at school all week?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Write to your council member.

Charles Allen is crappy and won’t care one bit. He loves to pander to his corrupt liberal base.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Write to your council member.

Charles Allen is crappy and won’t care one bit. He loves to pander to his corrupt liberal base.

+1. This is a no win for most dc council members.

[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

How often are you observing drop off patterns at other schools? Maybe what’s unique is Maury parents are privileged enough to have extra time in their day to monitor license plates? Not how I would spend extra time, but I’m over here slumming it at my school.

This has nothing to do with privilege. Most Maury parents walk to pick up and drop off. It’s very easy to see at those times many MD cars rolling up.
We pay taxes and deserve the highest spot at our in bounds school compared to a MD family. This isn’t privilege and it’s not racist, just a simple fact. It’s our neighborhood school, how it should work in a normal functioning city.

[Anonymous]

Some Brent families started our in a small IB house. Later on, as the kids got bigger, they bought a larger house outside the boundary, not necessarily far outside. But they continued to send their children to Brent without express permission of admins or DCPS. They kept house #1 to rent it out, use it as an office, a granny pad or whatever. I don't think anybody much save few busybodies cares about this, at least in the upper grades. But parents do tend to get upset with "boundary fraud cheaters" grab scarce PreS3 and PreK4 spots from those who actually live IB. Very different problem from MD residency cheaters in a school, but an interesting one that DCPS seems happy to turn a blind eye toward.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Write to your council member.

Charles Allen is crappy and won’t care one bit. He loves to pander to his corrupt liberal base.

Yes, but even if Allen didn't pander to his base, he could hardly change DCPS policy or practice on his own. He's just one of 18 council members. He certainly can't fix the Hill by-right MS and HS feeder situation no matter what he does or doesn't do.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Has DC ever done an anonymous review of a school like Maury to see how big of problem residency fraud really is. More to just gain overall information, not to target individual families. I guess Duke Ellington had an audit a few years ago. But it is a different animal.

I work in social services (in PG county), and there are a lot of very convoluted custody and living situations that most of the snowflakes on this site could not imagine in a million years. I also agree that there are black PG county residents who feel entitled to send their kids to DC schools because family still live there and to them, it is "home".

School registrars aren't there to "investigate", they are just box checkers. How much do you want the district to spend on investigating residency fraud? Charter schools actively want as many kids as possible for count day so they get their money. Very little incentive there for investigation if a family can provide some sort of paperwork.

OP, I assume you have very young children. What is your end game? Charter school? Private school? How is that helping your community and local schools. You can be angry at boundary cheaters as yet another dysfunction of DCPS, but, ask yourself, are your hands clean?

DC spends almost $30,000 per student. So for every cheater they catch they could provide housing for homeless families in DC.

We both know that budgets don't really work this way.

I'm curious if you can provide me a link for "DC spends almost $30,000 per student". Budget numbers published by DCPS, are not nearly this high. Even if you are looking at the total budget--not just general education. This is what I am looking at. https://dcpsbudget.ourdcschools.org/ . Thanks for additional sources.

I don't think this includes central office, OSSE or capital expenditures. Though of course those aren't unit costs that would immediately be affected if enrollment decreased due to addressing residency fraud.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Some Brent families started our in a small IB house. Later on, as the kids got bigger, they bought a larger house outside the boundary, not necessarily far outside. But they continued to send their children to Brent without express permission of admins or DCPS. They kept house #1 to rent it out, use it as an office, a granny pad or whatever. I don't think anybody much save few busybodies cares about this, at least in the upper grades. But parents do tend to get upset with "boundary fraud cheaters" grab scarce PreS3 and PreK4 spots from those who actually live IB. Very different problem from MD residency cheaters in a school, but an interesting one that DCPS seems happy to turn a blind eye toward.

DCPS has to go for the low hanging fruit, catching the MD address cheaters who don't pay DC tax, or not enough anyway. Maybe one day they'll also go at boundary cheaters who can pull it off, tighten up the rules and enforce them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Some Brent families started our in a small IB house. Later on, as the kids got bigger, they bought a larger house outside the boundary, not necessarily far outside. But they continued to send their children to Brent without express permission of admins or DCPS. They kept house #1 to rent it out, use it as an office, a granny pad or whatever. I don't think anybody much save few busybodies cares about this, at least in the upper grades. But parents do tend to get upset with "boundary fraud cheaters" grab scarce PreS3 and PreK4 spots from those who actually live IB. Very different problem from MD residency cheaters in a school, but an interesting one that DCPS seems happy to turn a blind eye toward.

This has been discussed to death, but that is legal and allowable under DC policy. You can live in bounds and enroll as an IB student, then move OOB and keep your spot at your current school through the school's terminal grade. You do not get feeder rights, though I've heard that's not enforced because they don't track these kids well enough to know. Note that wouldn't apply to pre-K most of the time, because you have to enroll as IB initially (though you could move after count day and still fall under the policy, though that sounds logistically burdensome).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Has DC ever done an anonymous review of a school like Maury to see how big of problem residency fraud really is. More to just gain overall information, not to target individual families. I guess Duke Ellington had an audit a few years ago. But it is a different animal.

I work in social services (in PG county), and there are a lot of very convoluted custody and living situations that most of the snowflakes on this site could not imagine in a million years. I also agree that there are black PG county residents who feel entitled to send their kids to DC schools because family still live there and to them, it is "home".

School registrars aren't there to "investigate", they are just box checkers. How much do you want the district to spend on investigating residency fraud? Charter schools actively want as many kids as possible for count day so they get their money. Very little incentive there for investigation if a family can provide some sort of paperwork.

OP, I assume you have very young children. What is your end game? Charter school? Private school? How is that helping your community and local schools. You can be angry at boundary cheaters as yet another dysfunction of DCPS, but, ask yourself, are your hands clean?

This is a very balanced post, and I'd note that the bolded is part of why I don't think DCPS is overly inclined to start randomly conducting checks of every kid who gets dropped off with a Maryland plate. I think there's a calculation that some of these kids are kind of in-and-out of DC depending on family situations and it would be disruptive to force them to disenroll when they go to their grandma's in PGC for three months only to re-enroll them when they return to their mom's on the Hill. Moreover, for kids experiencing trauma, it would be traumatic to also be subjected to additional scrutiny. I suspect there is a little bit of a "Do No Harm" approach in play.

[Anonymous]

This has nothing to do with privilege. Most Maury parents walk to pick up and drop off. It’s very easy to see at those times many MD cars rolling up.
We pay taxes and deserve the highest spot at our in bounds school compared to a MD family. This isn’t privilege and it’s not racist, just a simple fact. It’s our neighborhood school, how it should work in a normal functioning city.

Do you seriously not see the privilege involved in being available to walk your child both to and from school? How would you do that if you worked a shift job, or service job, or if you only had one parent in the home?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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

How often are you observing drop off patterns at other schools? Maybe what’s unique is Maury parents are privileged enough to have extra time in their day to monitor license plates? Not how I would spend extra time, but I’m over here slumming it at my school.

This has nothing to do with privilege. Most Maury parents walk to pick up and drop off. It’s very easy to see at those times many MD cars rolling up.
We pay taxes and deserve the highest spot at our in bounds school compared to a MD family. This isn’t privilege and it’s not racist, just a simple fact. It’s our neighborhood school, how it should work in a normal functioning city.

Maury parent here. I’m really not concerned. I assume most of the MD/VA plates are caregivers from other states. Some may also be staff members getting rides home (saw that yesterday). Unlike Brent the Maury zone still has affordable housing, and I understand that there were more OOB slots opened up this year. Low income families are more likely to have care networks that cross state lines. I suggest you MYOB and focus your energy on more productive pursuits to improve the school & neighborhood.