Jul 22, 2008

Aiming to keep students out

School districts target violators of residency rules

By Sharon Noguchi / Bay Area News Group

School won't open for more than a month, but attendance detectives are already on the prowl.

Instead of hunting down kids sneaking out of class, they're ferreting out those trying to sneak in.

Drawn by high test scores, some parents who don't buy or rent in pricey real-estate markets try, by hook or by crook, to enroll their children in what they perceive as the best public schools.

Districts are fighting back.

Cupertino Union officials this month stiffened proof-of-residency requirements and hired investigators to track down residency violators. The Sunnyvale-based Fremont Union High School District urges residents to "Save a Teacher!" by reporting attendance scofflaws.

Despite a statewide decline in the school-age population, high-performing schools have seen enrollment steadily creep up. The growth is a mixed blessing.

"It's nice to be loved, but there's limited money," said Superintendent Polly Bove of the Fremont Union High School District, whose five schools are all at or over capacity.

Students cost money at a time when financial pressures are particularly acute because of the state budget crunch. For districts like Palo Alto Unified and Fremont Union High, which are funded mostly by local property taxes, more students don't translate into a lot more dollars. Instead, their financial pie simply gets divvied up into smaller pieces.

Plus, there are staffing and physical constraints.

Stocklmeir elementary in Sunnyvale registered 315 children for kindergarten, an 83 percent increase over the past year's class. Even though fewer students actually enroll - as students transfer or move - Stocklmeir is planning on seven classes of about 33 kindergartners each. The Cupertino district is opening another wing at the school, which will grow to about 840 students, the largest elementary school in the district.

Falsifying documents isn't hard to do, and sometimes isn't even necessary, schools have discovered.

A Sunnyvale family, who didn't want their names used, sent their children to Hoover Elementary in Palo Alto by producing a grant deed for a Palo Alto home occupied by the children's grandparents. Although the mother's name was on the deed, her children weren't actually eligible because attendance is determined by where the child lives, not where a parent owns property. But Palo Alto officials never checked, said the mother, who wanted her children to attend a "good" school and later moved into the district.

Officials discover "sneak-ins" through returned mail to school, discrepancies in paperwork or a comment by a child about moving or commuting. Last year, a Cupertino Union employee living in San Jose, outside the district, discovered that one of her neighbors was a student who attended her school.

Administrators say that residency requirements benefit children. "We try to be fair and reasonable and work out options for parents," she said. "In the long run, hiding and not sharing your phone numbers do not create a safe environment for kids."

Not every district embraces strict residency checks.

Last year, the Evergreen School District in San Jose resisted parent pressure to toughen its requirements, out of fear that they might throw up a barrier to undocumented immigrants. "You can't mandate children to attend public schools, then put restrictions on that puts them in a double bind," board President Sylvia Alvarez said.

Elsewhere, officials stress that they're interested in verifying that students legally live in the district - and not in the country. Federal law prohibits districts from requiring proof of residency that undocumented immigrants may not possess - such as a driver's license or passport.