Dems get serious about securng borders

Discussion in 'West Mall' started by Horn6721, Sep 2, 2015.

  1. Horn6721

    Horn6721 10,000+ Posts

    finally:
    "Washington DC’s attorney general recently sued a married couple, alleging they had illegally enrolled their three children in well-regarded local public schools despite living outside the District, and demanding more than $224,000 in back tuition. Reached by the Washington Post at home, Alan Hill, the father named in the lawsuit, sounded bewildered: “We are in the middle of this process and still trying to understand it.”

    “The issue of nonresidents enrolling in D.C. public schools is often heated, particularly as students compete for a limited number of seats in highly sought-after schools,” the Post reports. “Parents often talk of sitting on wait lists for schools while they see drivers with license plates from neighboring states lining up to drop off their children."

    and
    "Clear across the country in Berkeley, California, the local school district also combats illegal enrollees at the behest of annoyed residents. Framed by poorer-performing school districts—most notably Oakland, a high-violence locale—Berkeley Unified School District has proven to be irresistible to parents desperately seeking a better life for their kids despite their inability to pay district housing prices.

    Residents even started the Berkeley Accountable Schools Project, a community group that monitors and complains about enrollment fraud. They claim as many as 40 percent of kids attending Berkeley public high schools are illegally enrolled"
    http://thefederalist.com/2015/08/31/the-border-hoppers-liberals-dont-love/
     
  2. Seattle Husker

    Seattle Husker 10,000+ Posts

    The most surprising thing about this post is that D.C. has any highly sought after public schools. We have the luxury of being in a district with 3 top 50 HS's per US News and World Report. My wife teaches at a Middle School that feeds one of these High Schools and is shocked at the volume of kids that aren't within the boundaries. The parents are typically quite open. Sure, the school secretary will immediately deflect them if they just show up and hand them an out of boundary address but still if they were ever in the boundaries or use a friends address they easily get past that first line of defense. Once you are in you're in. Of course, the school's budget is based on enrollment so other than overcrowding there really isn't a strong incentive to fight the out of boundary kids. BTW- Our district is the Republican bastion in an otherwise heavily Democrat King County.

    Now, I'm not getting the "Democrat" connection.
     
  3. NJlonghorn

    NJlonghorn 2,500+ Posts

    I don't know about Texas, but in most states the brunt of school costs are borne by local property taxes. Thus, if people who don't live in the area (and thus don't pay property taxes) are allowed to attend the schools, the district comes out behind.

    I am on the board of a very good school district in New Jersey. There are several less-well-regarded districts nearby, and parents often fib to enroll their kids in our district. We have a private detective on staff whose job is to enforce the residency requirement. Every year, he catches a dozen or more students who are found to reside elsewhere. If they fight when we ask them to leave, we generally counter by charging them for back tuition. If they disenroll voluntarily, we generally leave well enough alone.

    This sounds similar to what the DC schools typically do, but for some reason they are suing these parents for back tuition even though they voluntarily disenrolled. Something doesn't sound right.
     
  4. Seattle Husker

    Seattle Husker 10,000+ Posts

    Ahhh...that's the same here NJLonghorn. The bulk of costs are funded by property taxes.
     
  5. Horn6721

    Horn6721 10,000+ Posts

    This made me laugh, "We have a private detective on staff whose job is to enforce the residency requirement".

    and so did this from the link:
    "Residents even started the Berkeley Accountable Schools Project, a community group that monitors and complains about enrollment fraud. They claim as many as 40 percent of kids attending Berkeley public high schools are illegally enrolled"

    Hey!! these parents are just trying to get a better education for their kids? Wouldn't you?
     
  6. Horn6721

    Horn6721 10,000+ Posts

    Question since you both mentioned it
    " The bulk of costs are funded by property taxes."
    What does that have to do with anything?
     
  7. NJlonghorn

    NJlonghorn 2,500+ Posts

    The key is not that the funding comes from property taxes, but rather that it comes from local property taxes. If the state was paying, cross-zone attendance wouldn't matter all that much.
     
  8. NJlonghorn

    NJlonghorn 2,500+ Posts

    lol, good point. This nicely illustrates why immigration is such a tough problem.
     
  9. Seattle Husker

    Seattle Husker 10,000+ Posts

    With property taxes the local residents of the school are directly paying for the services.

    So, your corollary that I'm sure you'll bring up is with Mexican immigrants. They are paying for services through sales tax, income tax and a variety of other taxes. Are they paying property tax? No, but wherever they are living someone is paying property tax (landlord?). Neither of those articles are proposing building a wall around the district either. Investments like the Private Investigator NJLonghorn pointed out above are rather small investments. Did I anticipate where you were going?
     
  10. Horn6721

    Horn6721 10,000+ Posts

    You both seem to think because people who live in a particular district and pay property taxes in that district should be able to prevent " illegal students" from availing themselves from a better school district.
    Why?
    You have indicated that the people who pay the property taxes in the district somehow have the right to prevent kids who don't live in the district from attending those better schools.
    If hiring private investigators or having community groups policing who is attending the schools isn't patrolling their border I don't know what is.
     
  11. texas_ex2000

    texas_ex2000 2,500+ Posts

    Ha! That's hilarious. And let's not forget, Texas, the first state which passed the DREAM Act in-state tuition for illegal immigrants, gets raked over the coal for being xenophobic.

    By the way, a kid who's parents brought him over the border, who got the grades and scores to get accepted into UT, a kid that may have played football for the local high school, went to my church, and chose to stay in Texas...as long as there isn't a concrete solution to these illegals (which we need to have), I'd much rather let's this kid pay in-state tuition than some snotty liberal rich-kid from New York City or California and it's not even a tough question for me.

    You know what sticks in my craw? Drinking a man's beer and telling him how to cook a steak at his own grill.
     
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    Last edited: Sep 2, 2015
  12. Mr. Deez

    Mr. Deez Beer Prophet

    Like most major urban areas, DC has colossal income and educational inequality. Most of the schools in DC are horrendous war zones, but the super wealthy, white areas of DC probably have excellent schools.

    I think it's a pretty fair question to ask why those socially conscious gentry liberals don't let those poor black kids stuck in the ghetto schools go to their schools, but that's a whole separate thread.
     
  13. NJlonghorn

    NJlonghorn 2,500+ Posts

    Actually, I think it's pretty much the point of this thread, if I understand 6721 correctly.
     
  14. Mr. Deez

    Mr. Deez Beer Prophet

    I think he's talking about people enrolling their kids in districts where they neither live nor pay taxes. I think it's pretty easy to defend the districts in that scenario. I'm referring to people who live and pay taxes in DC but have to attend a crappy school when there's a good DC school just a few miles away.
     
  15. Sangre Naranjada

    Sangre Naranjada 10,000+ Posts

    One thing about limousine liberals is they will NEVER live the way they tell everybody else to live. Their number one motto should be "Do as I say, not as I do."
     
  16. Horn6721

    Horn6721 10,000+ Posts

    Yes MrD
    As NJ points out the article is about kids who don't live in DC or Berkely or other districts attending school in those districts.

    But how is that easily defended if the parents just want their kid to get a better education?
     
  17. Mr. Deez

    Mr. Deez Beer Prophet

    Because you generally get government services where you pay your taxes. If you pay your taxes to one district but go to a different one, your home district is getting a windfall by receiving your taxes without educating your kids, while another district is getting fleeced by having to educate your kids without receiving your taxes.
     
  18. n64ra

    n64ra 1,000+ Posts

    This problem happens in AISD. One elementary school has a Vietnamese program which means classes are taught in Vietnamese and English. This is obviously attractive to immigrants from Vietnam. It has very few students without a Vietnamese heritage. Some Vietnamese families live in Pflugerville ISD or Manor ISD. They supply a fake address to register for school. I know this because my wife worked at the school. The elementary kids don't realize they should keep this a secret as kids freely talk about the area they live in, name of street they live on, etc.
     
  19. Larry T Spider

    Larry T Spider 100+ Posts

    I don't know about aisd. But my old district required a utility bill with a parents name and the correct address on it. That seemed to cut down on fraud to a certain extent.
     
  20. Horn6721

    Horn6721 10,000+ Posts

    While property taxes do contribute to an ISD's funds those taxes are not even the majority of funds going into an ISD's budget. ISDs get state funds and federal funds so even though a parent might not live in a particular district they do pay taxes, state sales and maybe income taxes as well as pay federal taxes all of which contribute to a district.
     
  21. Crockett

    Crockett 5,000+ Posts

    Thanks to Gov. Bill Clements and every successor, the property taxes you pay in your school districts have increasingly become a state tax, even if it is assessed and collected locally. The state determines how much you get to keep and in a high per capita wealth district your property tax funds may have to be shared with other districts. There is some state revenue involved that is distributed based on attendance, but in prosperous suburbia the local property taxpayer pretty much carries the full freight. But ADA from the stealth students helps us keep more money at home.

    In the Lewisville ISD we have great schools and any student who wants can do an intradistrict transfer. Adjacent districts... Coppell, Plano, Northwest, Denton, Argyle, Grapevine ... are of comparable quality, so we're probably not getting much "illegal" influx. I would expect it may be a problem closer to Dallas ... Richardson. Carrollton Farmers Branch, Plano, Highland Park ... offer big advantages over Dallas ISD.
     
    Last edited: Sep 4, 2015
  22. Larry T Spider

    Larry T Spider 100+ Posts

    The posters above are right about state funding. Average daily attendance is calculated and the district is paid based on that. It opens up a can of worms, but the schools are being funded for teaching those students.
     
  23. Mr. Deez

    Mr. Deez Beer Prophet

    No, but they're certainly big enough to matter.
     
  24. Larry T Spider

    Larry T Spider 100+ Posts

    35.9% Local tax
    32.9% State
    17.9% Local bonds
    9% Federal
    5.1% Equity transfers and other

    This is for the state as a whole so your local district may vary. It gets complicated on how the money can be spend though. Money from certain places can only be spent in certain ways. Local money is to be used for maintenance and operations. That's why you can see some districts with a bloated admin building trying to pass construction bonds. Even if they cut all of those salaries to $0, they still wouldn't be allowed to spend it on construction. It's also why you can see fancy schools with teachers paid well below the norm. When I worked in a newer school I would often hear "they could pay you better if they spent less on the school." I could have been outside teaching under a tree and they wouldn't have had another dime to pay me with. It gets even more regulated if you are a title 1 school.

    Of the federal funds, almost all of it is spend in poor schools. Almost all of it is either Title 1, nutrition, or IDEA.
     
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  25. Horn6721

    Horn6721 10,000+ Posts

    LarryT
    I appreciate your knowledge on this. I know you just posted for Texas but the percentages won't vary a huge deal from state to state
    so the point I was making is yes home owners etc property taxes do contribute but even people who don't live in the district also contribute .
    It just seems mean spirited to hire a private investigator or have a council to kick out kids whose parents only want a better education when the parents did contribute to that school too.

    I read a study years ago on some Houston schools. One was failing every year for IIRC - 2011&got over $13K per student and other schools who were doing a little better got 9k. I need to go back and see if spending that much per student raised the school up.
     
  26. Crockett

    Crockett 5,000+ Posts

    It's not all about the Money 6721. If you could spend a day substitute teaching in the inner city and a day substituting with some sweet cooperative suburban kids, you'd soon realize education is a different process depending on where you are doing it. I heard a principal talking off the record about a rival, higher performing school. "You could put a head of lettuce on a stool in front of those classrooms and 95 percent of the kids would pass TASS." Thank God we have people like Larry willing to teach where it's not so easy.
    ,
     
  27. Larry T Spider

    Larry T Spider 100+ Posts

    Well, I'm not with those kids any longer unfortunately. I have always said that when academic achievement becomes a part of evaluations or pay, I am out. I now teach a bunch of kids from well off families that can all pass the end of year test right now. I love where I teach now, and it is easier in many ways, but I wish the system were different. Test scores will be a part of evaluations in the next year in most places. Having pay tied to that (which will happen in Texas IMO) will create a rush to the better schools. I feel like I was able to beat the rush.
     
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  28. NJlonghorn

    NJlonghorn 2,500+ Posts

    There is more variation than you may think. On average, according to this report, state and local shares are roughly 45% each, with the remaining 10% falling on the Feds. Based on what Larry posted, Texas isn't all that far off of the average. However, the range of local share according to this report is from 3.5% (Hawaii) to 59.9% (Illinois). Variation within states is large as well. For my district in New Jersey, for example, the 2015-16 budget is 93% local property taxes and 7% combined in state and federal aid.
     
  29. NJlonghorn

    NJlonghorn 2,500+ Posts

    I'm not a liberal, much less a "limousine liberal", but somehow I think this comment is directed at least partly in my direction.

    Property taxes in poorer districts can't support the educational expenses of those communities. This means that funding formulas have to be are skewed in favor of poorer districts. As a result, my taxes dollars are already paying for my own town's education and a disproportionate share of education costs elsewhere. I'm okay with that, which I guess makes me a liberal in your book.

    But that is different from letting people cheat a system that is already skewed in their favor. There is nothing hypocritical about this.
     
  30. Sangre Naranjada

    Sangre Naranjada 10,000+ Posts

    NJ, not directed at you. It is directed at the wealthy (maybe stinking rich is a better phrase) political class, the loud mouthed, yet empty headed Hollywood activists and the like, who think they know what is best for everybody else. These people have absolutely no clue, having never "walked a mile in my moccasins", but it doesn't stop them from loudly proclaiming how people in flyover country ought to live. It was a general comment that applies to the issue at hand in this thread.

    In fact, I grew up in a family headed by an educator. My dad spent more than 40 years teaching and administrating in Texas schools, and always in smaller, poorer districts. Ever heard of Dell City, Texas? How about Veribest ISD? Petrolia? Runge? Santa Rosa? I understand funding issues pretty well for a layman, and I don't have a problem with your take on things. I think a big part of the issue is that the funds from various sources are not fungible, as outlined very well in an earlier post by the Spiderman. I think partial fungibility would allow districts to further improve where the local board and administration decides they need to improve (be it salaries, construction, additional classroom resources, etc) instead of having dollars from the bureaucratic lords on high (who know not jack **** about the localities to which those funds are going) being tied up in all kinds of red tape and strict limitations on how they can be spent.

    Reporting on a district's spending choices to the public being served as well as to the bureaucrats would prevent extreme abuses of funding from occurring, or could at least bring them to light for correction.
     
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    Last edited: Sep 4, 2015

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