
Mother Jailed For Trying to Put Children Into Better School - georgecmu
http://www.npr.org/2011/01/28/133306180/Mother-Jailed-For-School-Fraud-Flares-Controversy
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stephenbez
Misleading title.

The original title was better: "Mother Jailed For School Fraud, Flares
Controversy"

Or: Ohio mother Kelley Williams-Bolar was convicted of lying about her
residency to get her daughters into a better school district

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davidmurphy
Agree. Lying = fraud = uncool.

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angdis
The situation could have been handled in a more compassionate way than jail.
How many wealthy white collar criminals get away with far more fraud (and for
strictly selfish reasons to boot) and never see the inside of jail cell?

Given the HUGE disparity between the have and the have-not school districts,
one can appreciate the mother's point of view.

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julius_geezer
School districts in New Jersey aggressively police residency, using detective
at times, though I don't know that it has ever come to the point of a criminal
case there. My impression, from an article or two in the NY Times years ago,
is that this is not usually a racial matter there.

A more accurate headline might be "Mother Jailed for Providing False
Affidavits in Effort to Put Children in Better School."

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david2777
That seems kind of odd to me, here in Hawaii they split the school districts
up on each island (the island I'm on has 9). The school I would normally have
to attend is terrible, but over here you can simply apply for an exemption,
which they almost always grant, and go to almost any school on the island. Are
you not allowed to do that in states such as New Jersey?

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markessien
This is why America remains segregated. Rich neighbourhoods send all their
children to the same schools, poor neighbourhoods send their children to the
same school.

Children should be assigned to schools out of their living zone - then there
will be incentive to make all schools nice, and it will break the cycle of
poverty.

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rst
There have been court-ordered busing programs within large American cities to
try to deal with racial segregation in particular, though not without
controversy. (Riots in Boston in the 1970s, for instance.) However, these are
going out of style, and even when in style were usually confined to a single
school district (generally, that means a single town or city), in part for
legal reasons (Milliken v. Bradley). And they were only intended to address
racial segregation, not economic issues.

And there's pretty clearly an effect. There's a large house price premium for
schools in a "good" school districts. Here are some (2006, but still relevant)
numbers for school districts in Silicon Valley:
[http://www.cupertinoschoolscores.com/News/Home_Buyers_Pay_Pr...](http://www.cupertinoschoolscores.com/News/Home_Buyers_Pay_Premium.htm)

