Boundary fraud: does anyone care

[Anonymous]

A friend and an acquaintce did not get into their inbound prek3. That happens. But I recently found out that a former neighbor who kept their property as a rental uses than rental address and their kid got into prek3. I'm especially irritated because the family in question has a lot of financial resources and could have paid for private and the two people I know are struggling (one gets a voucher from dc and for the record I support vouchers ). BUT now my tax dollars are paying for a voucher for one family so that another family can take advantage of the system when they could have chosen to but a smaller place in bounds rather than a bigger place out of bounds and lie. Will anyone care if I report it? There is no question of the fraud. This is not a divorced couple or a special needs child getting a particular placement or anything like that. They rent their current in bounds place and are landlords in their current place for the alley garage turned apartment.

[Anonymous]

Normally they might care but due to covid that kind of thing may not be a priority.

[Anonymous]

I’m at a super competitive charter and can think of several students who live in Maryland. I’m assuming they use an aunts/grandparents address.

[Anonymous]

Report them.

[Anonymous]

DCPS and OSSE obviously have much bigger fish to fry during a pandemic. They didn't even care about this sort of arrangement pre Covid.

If the family owns the property, can produce the required enrollment docs linked it, and has paid all DC taxes owed, OSSE/DC school residency fraud office just isn't interested. With many families temporarily re-inventing their residency situations due to Covid, the system doesn't anywhere near the resources or incentives to bother with this sort of case.

Other parents can rant and rave and report the "cheaters" on the residency fraud hotline without accomplishing a thing. Move on.

[Anonymous]

I know of several of my students are out of state and one is even out of the country. I have no desire to raise any flags about this. It's a pandemic. People maybe have to lean on family.

[Anonymous]

Pandemic or not, nobody cares now or before. There are 3 kids registered into a janitor's closet in the condo building where their father works. Nobody cares that the unit doesn't even exist. Several people didn't get their prk4 spot, because of this.
I can have my work print new address on my paycheck every week as it comes out.

[Anonymous]

Don't bother trying to predict what the government might do. You can't know. Just report them and let the city decide what to do with the information.

[Anonymous]

I care. I am floored by the fact that several of my supposedly progressive friends do this and believe it is no big deal. They are literally taking free quality education away from a poor kid so they can save a few bucks.

This kind of hypocrisy is one of the many reasons why so many people are disenchanted with elites of all political stripes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I care. I am floored by the fact that several of my supposedly progressive friends do this and believe it is no big deal. They are literally taking free quality education away from a poor kid so they can save a few bucks.

This kind of hypocrisy is one of the many reasons why so many people are disenchanted with elites of all political stripes.

Op. Exactly this is one reason why I'm upset. I'm not out to get anyone who has uncertain circumstances due to covid or is facing homelessness for any reason. And while its wrong for a janitor to use a closet as an address I do understand why that happens. But I'm upset that people buying a house for over one million would do this. They are cheating everyone! And they'll do it for kid #2 as well.

[Anonymous]

If it helps you feel better, OP, poor families do it as much, and probably more, than UMC ones. Residency fraud is rampant in DC because we have such close neighbors and porous borders, and not just in schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I care. I am floored by the fact that several of my supposedly progressive friends do this and believe it is no big deal. They are literally taking free quality education away from a poor kid so they can save a few bucks.

This kind of hypocrisy is one of the many reasons why so many people are disenchanted with elites of all political stripes.

Op. Exactly this is one reason why I'm upset. I'm not out to get anyone who has uncertain circumstances due to covid or is facing homelessness for any reason. And while its wrong for a janitor to use a closet as an address I do understand why that happens. But I'm upset that people buying a house for over one million would do this. They are cheating everyone! And they'll do it for kid #2 as well.

+2

We have several wealthy friends in DCPS and the charters and if I found out they were doing this, I would confront them. As other PP have noted, this is a complicated time and a lot of families have complicated situations at the moment. But if I knew for certain the family was just straight up committing boundary fraud, I think I'd have to report.

You hear white parents in DC complain all the time about their suspicion that parents living in PG county are committing fraud to enroll their kids in DCPS. And those are situations where often it's a fuzzy situation (parents are divorced and kid is enrolled via non-custodial parent's residency, for instance). The idea of be bothered by that but not being livid at wealthy DC residents exploiting the fact that they own an investment property to sneak their kids into a "better" school... it makes me really angry.

Education in DC isn't even remotely fair to children even when people follow the rules. The least we could do is actually enforce those rules against the people who already benefit from the inequities and are just trying to weasel some extra value out of the system for themselves.

[Anonymous]

How does one anonymously report fraud?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If it helps you feel better, OP, poor families do it as much, and probably more, than UMC ones. Residency fraud is rampant in DC because we have such close neighbors and porous borders, and not just in schools.

Boundary fraud is completely different from residency fraud.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If it helps you feel better, OP, poor families do it as much, and probably more, than UMC ones. Residency fraud is rampant in DC because we have such close neighbors and porous borders, and not just in schools.

Boundary fraud is completely different from residency fraud.

Yeah, except people do both. UMC use a condo or investment property, lower class use a friend or relative. If you’re going to take a stand, then do it consistently.