Reply to Can someone give me the number to call to report boundary fraud?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I thought the threshold was legality, not whether something is "normalized" or "excused"?[/quote]

Please point out where it says "boundary fraud" in the DC code. There's a whole chapter on Residency Requirement and Nonresident Tuition and residency fraud is specifically discussed in § 38–312.03. Surely if there's a whole chapter on residency requirements, and boundary fraud is also illegal, that phrase must come up somewhere?

In the section where it talks about penalties for false information, there's this part: "establishing by information and other evidence that a student or the student’s parent or primary caregiver is not in fact a District of Columbia resident or an other primary caregiver." Maybe there's another part about false information penalties for if the student is a resident but lives somewhere in a different boundary and I just missed it. You can check and see for yourself.  Or just find one single case where someone has been fined or imprisoned on the basis of this law since 2012, when it was last rewritten. That's typically what happens when something is illegal, right?[/quote]

Best post of this long thread.  Thanks, PP.

Boundary fraud is clearly very unpopular with the morally supercilious crowd on this thread, but illegal?  This lawyer doesn't see that either.  From what I gather, respecting school boundaries in DC is a practice, a policy and a hope of ed leaders and stakeholders, vs. a statutory requirement.  Why not?  Because DC public schools aren't popular or good enough across the board for DC politicians to make boundary fraud illegal.  They'd have to concede that there are good and bad schools in the DC public system if they were to start fining or imprisoning parents for breaking the law to avoid certain schools.  They aren't prepared to do that, for political reasons.[/quote]

You sign forms attesting to the truth of the information you've given, and you are required to provide supporting documentation.

I don't know if boundary fraud is technically "illegal", but I do know it's technically wrong, is morally wrong, is an abuse of the system, and hurts other students and families.

You think if you can't be jailed for it, it's a free-for-all?[/quote]

The law spells out what you are attesting to on that form that's relevant: residency within the district. If you lie about that, it's illegal. And again, this is validated by the fact that no one has been prosecuted for this. Jailed or fined.

You are free of course to think that it's morally wrong and hurtful.

But when you call things "fraud" or say "you sign forms", you are implying not just that it's wrong but that it's illegal. If it were, that would be a much stronger argument against it. That's why you're doing it. But it's not.

Go lobby the city council if you want. I personally would not care if it were illegal. Maybe it should be. But it's not. Until that changes, the phrase "boundary fraud" is just an attempt to equate something that is clearly illegal, residency fraud, with something you object to morally but that is not illegal. [/quote]

The front page of the enrollment form asks for the parents' addresses and the [b]student's address. [/b]

The bottom of the page says:  
I confirm all the information provided above is correct to the best of my knowledge. I understand that DCPS will keep this information confidential and 
will use it for DCPS business only. I understand that providing false information is punishable by law. I understand that I cannot maintain enrollment at 
more than one school for SY25-26, and I am confirming my enrollment for SY25-26 at the school listed above. I understand that if I am enrolling 
because of receiving a waitlist offer from this school, I will be removed from waitlists of all schools ranked below this school on my My School DC 
application. 
Print Name:  _ Signature:  _ Date:

The page thinks "providing false information is punishable by law."[/quote]

Where's a definition of the "parents' address" or the "student's address" on the enrollment form?  I couldn't find it.   A quick check of the equivalent forms for our neighboring school systems--MoCo, Arlington, PG County--taught me that in the suburbs, enrollment forms spell out what qualifies as the parents' and student's address (e.g. the address where the child sleeps most nights in the year).

If DCPS and DCPSC aren't going to define a student's address on the enrollment form, what's the relevance of said address?  Seriously. Tell us. [/quote]

Go ahead and try it lol. [/quote]

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