As school districts strive to achieve higher test scores and performance, it is inevitable that parents will go to any length to enroll their child in higher performing schools. Out of District fraud is happening at an alarming rate. Many school boards are appealing to town and city management to step in to curb the issue through penalties, fines, and even criminal charges.
From the Valley Breeze Newspaper members of the North Providence Town Council agreed Monday to help school officials with their never-ending effort to chase out-of-district students from the town’s schools.
The council’s ordinance committee decided to hold off on Councilor Stephen Feola’s proposal to penalize homeowners who harbor out-of-district students by taking away their homestead tax exemption, but agreed to:
* Support a request by school officials to the North Providence Police Department asking that the department criminally prosecute those caught falsifying residency information. Feola had asked that people caught allowing students to use their address be charged with a misdemeanor crime.
* Work with Tax Assessor Janesse Muscatelli to cross-reference town properties to provide school officials with evidence they need to investigate claims that people are living in a certain apartment. School officials are in the middle of a lengthy process to create their own database, said Supt. Melinda Smith, but are at a disadvantage until that system is completed.
School officials said they’re now requiring sworn affidavits both from the people who are enrolling students and from their landlords attesting that they live at a certain location.
Town attorney Mark Welch agreed with Warren that the best way for the town to help school officials enforce residency rules is the “aggressive procedure” of contacting police to “see what they’re willing to do” on criminal prosecution.
School officials have already found and “exited” nine students for not living in the town, “almost one a day,” said Supt. Melinda Smith, and they expect to find more in the coming weeks.
Smith said that enrollment is way up this year in North Providence schools, keeping Masse very busy tracking down students. The middle school level is especially crowded, with Ricci Middle School exceeding its contractual limits for students in a classroom, said Smith.
Combatting out-of-district fraud is a battle that can’t be taken lightly. There are several steps that can be taken to reduce the number of out-of-district fraud cases. First and foremost, analyze your existing school data with an Address Purification Solution. In conjunction with Address Purification, have those addresses checked against change of address notices. Parents that move out of district often change their mailing address with the Postal Service but not with the school. Lastly implement an Online Registration Solution that can automate the process first of entering correct and legible addresses then providing School Registrars a simple way to verify enrollment documentation electronically.
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