Is it just me, or does this win the dumbest idea for 2008? We need a new "thinking" school board. Good thing we can vote for four this time around!
http://www.rblandmark.com/main.asp?SectionID=1&SubSectionID=1&ArticleID=4502&TM=84252.07
D96 chief floats plan for residency proof
Suggests volunteer —˜authenticators' could do checks
By BOB SKOLNIK
Contributing Reporter
The families of all students in Riverside Elementary School District 96 could have to prove residency each and every year if an idea floated before the District 96 school board is adopted.
District 96 Superintendent Jonathan Lamberson has been reviewing how the district handles proof of residency and is asking the school board to revisit the issue and to decide by April whether to change the current policy.
Under the current policy only students new to the district, kindergarten students or transfers, are subject to stringent proof of residency. Families of new students must present three documents, such as mortgages, property tax bills, leases, a driver's license or utility bills and an original birth certificate of the student to the principal of the school their child will attend to prove residency.
Members of the school board have yet to make up their minds whether to change the current policy.
"I don't really have a position," said board Vice President Nancy Jensen. "Jon is just floating the idea out there. I haven't made up my mind yet."
The discussion of a new policy for validating residency comes as the school board is updating its policy manual.
"This has just kind of been a natural progression in the course of completing the updating of the district's policy manual," Lamberson said.
Last March, after a lengthy investigation, the district removed two students from the district after determining that they lived in Berwyn. District 96 is now in the process of trying to collect about $33,000 in tuition from the family after a Cook County Circuit Court judge upheld the district's ruling that the family did not live in District 96.
The district is feeling some pressure to make sure that only kids who live in the district attend District 96 schools.
However, Jensen said she doesn't feel that the district is having any more residency problems now than it has had before.
"The problem itself isn't anything new, and in my mind we're not really having more issues than in past years," Jensen said.
Under a proposal Lamberson brought before the school board at its Dec. 16 meeting five documents, instead of the current three, proving residency would have to be brought to a child's school within two weeks before the start of the school.
The principal of that school would have the final say in determining whether residency has been proved and whether the child could enroll. One drawback of this policy would be the drain on the district's limited administrative staff in the checking through residency documents of every child every year, Lamberson said.
To alleviate this problem Lamberson proposed using residency authenticators (RAs) in a community-based approach to prove residency.
Residency authenticators would be unpaid volunteers. RAs would need to have one or more children going to school in District 96, would need to be an active member of the a local PTA, would have to be sponsored by a Parent Leadership Team member and would be bonded by the district.
Residency authenticators would have the power to sign an affidavit certifying that a student does indeed live within the district's boundaries. That affidavit along with a copy of the driver's license of the student's parent and a copy of one utility bill could be dropped off or just mailed in to the local school to serve as proof of residency.
The thinking behind this proposal is that local residents know best who does and does not live in their community. The mail-in process would also relieve the administrative burden on district staff.
RAs would base their affidavits of residency on their knowledge of their own neighborhood. They would look for "markers" of residency such as having seen a student entering or leaving a particular address a number of times, having seen family members and the student often being visible at a residence during non school hours, having been inside the home and seen the student at that address, and having seen the student go to and from school from a specific address on numerous occasions.
Lamberson also suggested that this community-based method could be a more effective means of ferreting out people who don't live in the district.
"We have never picked up anything from the traditional method," Lamberson said.
School board member Richard Volpe expressed concern about the idea.
"We're adding a whole other level of bureaucracy to be managed," Volpe said.
Jensen wondered whether empowering a parent to act as a residency authenticator would create an appearance of favoritism and described the idea as "pretty out of the box."
The school board will have to decide whether to adopt any new residency policy by April. For the next three months, Lamberson and the school board will continue to seek input and reaction from PTA leaders and other members of the school community.
If the board does adopt a new residency policy Lamberson urged the board to consider authorizing using the residency authenticators in at least one school as a pilot project to see the how the idea would work in practice.