Reply to WaPo takes deep dive into DCPS residency fraud

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Here is the deal - all you need is a few well publicized stories on Families having to pay - and implication to students and people will start to think twice about it.
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It's well publicized that some people who commit crimes go to jail for a long time, but there's still plenty of crime - that's because criminals don't expect to get caught. Research consistently finds that "The certainty of being caught is a vastly more powerful deterrent than the punishment." (https://nij.gov/five-things/pages/deterrence.aspx)

An out-of-district parent who knows of dozens of people who don't pay anything and a few who pay a lot, they are unlikely to be deterred. So while people who are caught shouldn't be let off the hook, the focus should be on removing out-of-district families.[/quote]

Here's the other way to catch the scammers. Right now, many schools have a financial incentive not to worry about residency fraud.  DC should make clear that if schools report fraud and expel scammers, that they will get to keep their funding and even get a bonus for each fraud case they uncover.  On the other hand, if the fraud is uncovered by OSSE, then the school should lose 150% of the scammer's per pupil funding allotment.  That will focus the principals on the problem damn quick.[/quote]

You have this backwards.  OSSE should do ALL of the residency verification and the schools should do none. Take it out of individual schools' hands just like they did with the lottery.  It's either all above board or OSSE owns the failures.[/quote]

Yeah what is one registrar or clerk supposed to do in a school, they are in the office and copy the docs, if they look fraudulent they don't register. These folks are not stupid they are using others addresses, fake docs, and fake letters from grandma![/quote]

Precisely -- the school registrars are not forensic analysts nor do they have any specialization in fraud.  If it's OSSE they can resource this function appropriately and maintain access to central DC data - at least name and address of tax filers, medicaid/SNAP/tanf recipients .  That would be a start.  make that the baseline and require a higher bar for anyone who can't/won't meet it.  There will certainly be exceptions that require a deeper dive, but treat the exceptions as exceptional rather than being lax as the baseline for enforcement.

One other potential snag -- a student could be able to verify residency in the short term and move before or during the school year.  Mobility is a challenge, and those with greater housing instability will also likely  have more fluid living arrangements.  But the bigger issue is middle class out of state residents exploiting loopholes for personal gain and not dealing with legitimate residents suffering from housing instability [/quote]

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