Poll: Ohio mom jailed for sending kids to a better school district. Your thoughts?

[viranimus]

It is sort of funny to me. I dont know If Im the only one that sees this. But isnt choosing a better or worse education from a country ranked 18th globally and is consistently viewed as behind the curve just kind of pointless?

The US school system is horrid pretty much across the board. Its still deeply rooted in archaic ideologies of building generations of assembly line workers from the industrial revolution days.

So honestly picking favor of one school over another seems to be kinda silly when they are all still vastly inferior.

If I had to pick a side my logic would be if that the school in question was a public school within the same state, then it shouldnt make a difference one way or another. If it was out of state or a private school, then yeah its a problem. However what confuses me is that if this woman liked the school district so much to spend so much time shuttling her kids to school, wouldnt it have made more sense to move to that school district and then shuttle herself to where ever it was she had to go to work?

Honestly she should have seen this coming. Usually what defines a "better" school is the money related to that school, which is directly linked to the community that school is in. So in all likelihood, and this is me just guessing, it was pretty easy to tell these kids didnt fit in as they were clearly from a poorer family than most of the student body. The students as well as the faculty could prolly identify it. And another problem with this whole equation is these "better" schools do have tendencies to try to weed kids like this out of their school. Ive seen it first hand. If the faculty doesnt think a kid "fits" with the rest of the student they are aggressively more likely to portray the kid as a problematic student, keeping them in trouble for nonsensical infractions and such to the point that they can show a track history of the kid being a problem and try to expel the kid from their school system because of it, In most cases because the parents are not from a affluent family who the school runs no monetary risk of offending. I hate to say it, but honestly seems like the kids would have been better off not being in an environment like that in the first place.

 

[TWRule]

Work to change the laws, or find a legal way to make an exception at least. It's as simple as that. Fix the system rather than finding ways around it.

 

[Amaury_games]

Right. I understood the relevance of this law. Do you know if there can be exceptions? Could this mom have talked to (or still talk to) someone in order to make a deal so her children could study in another school? If the big deal is because the money that is distributed to the schools count only the people that live in the area, couldn't there be an annotation that said that a certain number of people from certain areas are studying in schools of other areas? Are there precedents for discussions like this?

School funding is based on "districts", sometimes it'll be one town that has its own district, sometimes one city will have multiple districts. The funding from school districts is based on property values. She may have been able to make arrangements with the school, but some form of out of pocket tuition would be involved, as if it were a private school.

Yes, the tuition fee is what I had in mind. I realize that, if she had the money, she wouldn't go through all this trouble just to send her kids to a different public school than her district's. But, as I've seen many people say in here, 30 grand is a lot of money, to the point that I question where did this value come up from, and why couldn't there be a deal to make it easier for her to pay this fee.
Also, I find it bad that the money is decided only by the district's properties' value, and disregards how many people attend to these schools. The demand for resources has more to do with how many people study in the schools than how valuable their properties are. Or should be, I think.

 

[UberNoodle]

A 10 day sentence? I'm sure she'll get over it pretty quickly.

But not the criminal record which with pop up as a flag for the rest of her life. Employers most likely won't even bother to see what that 'crime' was.

 

[InfiniteSingularity]

Justified? Yea, probably. Should she be punished? Absolutely. Whether or not a law is right or wrong does not dictate whether it should be followed or not. There are many laws I do not agree with but if I break one of them and get caught, I expect to be punished. It may lead to me trying to change the law in the future but that does not excuse past crimes.

This post is bad and you should feel bad.

It is the DUTY of the citizens to challenge, and even ignore, 'bad laws'.
The government isn't perfect and many laws are passed out of brown-nosing and law makers being full-on-retarded.

And it is the duty of the person challenging those laws to accept the punishment until it is changed. Any activist knows you cannot complain about the punishment. It is the law you are fighting against NOT the result of said law.

No, fuck you. If the law said "Kill all niggers" and you knew it was wrong, would you follow it? What if it was "Kill all women"? I know this is extreme, but this is how it is. The law is not "be all & end all". If the law is wrong, then it should be broken. Because by adhering to an unjust law you are being unjust, and that is doing wrong to yourself or others, and "because it's the law" is not a good enough reason to do that. "Every immoral law must be disobeyed" (Jack Kervorkian), because if you follow an immoral law, YOU are being immoral. YOU are screwing people over because some arbitrary list of rules tells you to, and do you know what that makes you? A fucking sheep

Settle down there bud, it isn't that black and white. Simply going against a law because it is immoral isn't necessarily the best way to achieve morality. Afterall, you aren't helping all those who are still being forced to follow it. Activism is a much better way to go about it.

Even then, are you sure this is as Immoral as it looks? Consider:

But it wasn't her Akron district of residence, so her children were ineligible to attend school there, even though her father lived within the district's boundaries.

The only tie she had with that district was that HER father lived there. Not, like, the father of the children.

She 'lives part-time with her dad'. I'm not even sure what that means. Sometimes she visits? Does she *HAVE* a residence there, or doesn't she?

Now go back and read the rest of the article. If this is moral, than there should be a moral reason why this is okay. There isn't any real rationale for why this needed to happen for her. What is the big moral obligation that she should be allowed to jump districts? It isn't like they were getting bullied overly much, or something. She just wanted them to go to a better school.

Well fair enough. What's wrong with jumping districts? If the government puts a shit school in one district and a good one in another, you're going to get district-jumpers. Why can't both schools be equal of standard, so you can still get the best standard of education no matter where you live? What's the point of refusing one district a good education while granting their next-door neighbour one? Where's the gain? There is a thing called equal opportunity which is supposed to be embraced in 'democracies' like the US. Now if that is the case, why is an equal opportunity for good education being denied to this family? I know you're supposed to campaign to change the law, but what if a) they take 10 years to "process your request" or some shit (which they probably will) or b) ignore it and say you're wrong. What then? Are you just going to go along with sending your kids to a shit school? Because "the law" tells you to? That's bullshit

And yeah, I'm a little worked up, because it's shit like this that makes me angry at society

 

[kannibus]

Wow, America seems to have a royally boned up education system.

Uh, I suppose if I was in a similar situation I'd do the same thing. What I'm not getting is why they're concerned about "the money needs to stay with our students" and other stuff like that. Isn't it all going to the Feds anyway?

Short answer is: No, the money does not go to the Feds, nor do the Feds *directly* fund schools. The Federal Government does give money to schools, particularly those that do extremely well or extremely poorly, but schools are the responsibility of the State Government and rely on State Funds, which are collected from residents in various districts unevenly. Tax rates - especially sales tax rates - vary widely through a state; property taxes are also widely varied from district to district - typically called counties. Each county has different districts within itself, which divide up what children go where to school and how much funding a school receives is directly linked to what taxes that county brings in and how they divide those taxes amongst their schools.

It's royally unfair in many ways. Economic class determines where you can afford to live, and where your children will go to school - where you live determines how good your school is. The poor have shit schools and the wealthy have excellent schools is the result. Now, you can look and see that there are offsets in place. For example, new teachers are encouraged to teach in low income school districts by the Federal government 'forgiving' their student loans if they do so for a certain period of time - and new teachers often have the newest knowledges and techniques for teaching... but they lack experience so that's a mixed bag. Many die-hard educators will go to 'bad' schools and try to reform them for love of what they do, but their ability to make an impact is limited by the almighty dollar...

It's a clusterfuck to be honest, and I'm in college to be an educator one day so... yay. /head>> desk.

Fascinating.

That's way more about US schooling than I ever knew. So pretty much if your ass was born in the projeckts, you're more or less stuck there forever? That really sucks.

So what if you get your ass thrown out of some school and you have to go to another district? Would you have to pay the same rates as before, seeing as you didn't move your residence, or would you have to pay different rates, because school boards are (in my experience) comprised of ass and fail?

Seriously, no sarcasm, I'm genuinely curious.

 

[Zechnophobe]

Well fair enough. What's wrong with jumping districts? If the government puts a shit school in one district and a good one in another, you're going to get district-jumpers. Why can't both schools be equal of standard, so you can still get the best standard of education no matter where you live? What's the point of refusing one district a good education while granting their next-door neighbour one? Where's the gain? There is a thing called equal opportunity which is supposed to be embraced in 'democracies' like the US. Now if that is the case, why is an equal opportunity for good education being denied to this family? I know you're supposed to campaign to change the law, but what if a) they take 10 years to "process your request" or some shit (which they probably will) or b) ignore it and say you're wrong. What then? Are you just going to go along with sending your kids to a shit school? Because "the law" tells you to? That's bullshit

And yeah, I'm a little worked up, because it's shit like this that makes me angry at society

I agree that both schools should be raised to a certain standard. Schools get money by having a certain amount of attendance however. They also get money from the Taxes of the people in the district they operate. That was a point made in the article. If she sends to another district, she is basically getting a better school her taxes haven't gone towards.

Now, I think the whole education system could use an overhaul, but I think this is much more a nuts and bolts disagreement here. There is no major tragedy that she was avoiding. She broke a very minor law (sending to a different district) and then to cover that up, broke a larger law (Additional lying to the government). The original part there is a fairly minor thing, but it gets kinda out of hand When she tries to cover it up.

Anyhow, I think she should not have done what she did, and think that working with the system to make a better one is the right course of action, except in extreme cases.

 

[Dags90]

Fascinating.

That's way more about US schooling than I ever knew. So pretty much if your ass was born in the projeckts, you're more or less stuck there forever? That really sucks.

So what if you get your ass thrown out of some school and you have to go to another district? Would you have to pay the same rates as before, seeing as you didn't move your residence, or would you have to pay different rates, because school boards are (in my experience) comprised of ass and fail?

Seriously, no sarcasm, I'm genuinely curious.

Pretty much yes. For the second question, it depends. If you're over 16 and aren't legally required to be in school you may simply be thrown out. I know in my town (an affluent suburb) people who were expelled were given homeschooling provided by the school district at no additional cost.

 

[rutger5000]

I read the article, but found that it didn't give enough information. I want to know wetter she payed money at all to send her children to school. I've got the impression that she didn't pay tuition in the form of taxes for the school she send her children to, but did she pay taxes to send her children to the school in her own district (the one where they didn't go). If she did she payed for her children education, and is totally entitled to send them to any non-private school in the country. If she didn't then yeah she should have payed the tuition, and since she most likely could not spare 30 000 dollars she needs to be put in jail.

 

[Mylinkay Asdara]

Wow, America seems to have a royally boned up education system.

Uh, I suppose if I was in a similar situation I'd do the same thing. What I'm not getting is why they're concerned about "the money needs to stay with our students" and other stuff like that. Isn't it all going to the Feds anyway?

Short answer is: No, the money does not go to the Feds, nor do the Feds *directly* fund schools. The Federal Government does give money to schools, particularly those that do extremely well or extremely poorly, but schools are the responsibility of the State Government and rely on State Funds, which are collected from residents in various districts unevenly. Tax rates - especially sales tax rates - vary widely through a state; property taxes are also widely varied from district to district - typically called counties. Each county has different districts within itself, which divide up what children go where to school and how much funding a school receives is directly linked to what taxes that county brings in and how they divide those taxes amongst their schools.

It's royally unfair in many ways. Economic class determines where you can afford to live, and where your children will go to school - where you live determines how good your school is. The poor have shit schools and the wealthy have excellent schools is the result. Now, you can look and see that there are offsets in place. For example, new teachers are encouraged to teach in low income school districts by the Federal government 'forgiving' their student loans if they do so for a certain period of time - and new teachers often have the newest knowledges and techniques for teaching... but they lack experience so that's a mixed bag. Many die-hard educators will go to 'bad' schools and try to reform them for love of what they do, but their ability to make an impact is limited by the almighty dollar...

It's a clusterfuck to be honest, and I'm in college to be an educator one day so... yay. /head>> desk.

Fascinating.

That's way more about US schooling than I ever knew. So pretty much if your ass was born in the projeckts, you're more or less stuck there forever? That really sucks.

So what if you get your ass thrown out of some school and you have to go to another district? Would you have to pay the same rates as before, seeing as you didn't move your residence, or would you have to pay different rates, because school boards are (in my experience) comprised of ass and fail?

Seriously, no sarcasm, I'm genuinely curious.

If you are thrown out of one school and it is the ONLY school in your district then your parents are responsible for paying for you to attend another school outside your district - as it is illegal to NOT have your children in some form of schooling (home school or public or private, etc.) prior to the age of 16 in most states. If your kid mucks up his "free" education it's on the parents to pay for an alternative. If, on the other hand, your district has multiple schools (often the case in larger or more densely populated areas) then your child will be bounced to another one... and you will have to arrange transportation of some kind.

There were projects that attempted to bus low income students to schools in better income districts with agreements for partial payment and other experimental things done to try to find alternatives to the current state of affairs, but they were heavily criticized and are still wobbly attempts at best.

We're still in need of serious solutions, because things like this happen ALL the time and illegal immigrant students (from wherever they are from, NOT just our neighbor to the South) added to students attending 'out of residence' illegally or in the margins of legality are overcrowding schools that were never intended to service that kind of capacity - which, as it has been pointed out elsewhere above, degrades the ability of that school to service any of its students appropriately.

Again I say: clusterfuck. You rob Peter to pay Paul but Peter owes Paul to begin with and all turns into one system stealing what the other borrowed and no one has the final tab covered for anyone.

 

[rees263]

I would have thought this would count as a civil suit (ie no jail)? I suppose if she falsified legal documents that's different.

This seems a bit like the postcode lottery [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postcode_lottery] we have in the UK, where any number of public services, including schools, are based on your postcode and people in certain areas are disadvantaged based on this alone. In a society where we are all supposed to fund local services through taxes it shouldn't happen.

 

[Zeekar]

Not to sound like a cold conservative, but no; she broke the law. There is no justification.

My parents worked their asses off to send me through a good school district and didn't "cheat" to do so -- they were no better off. And they got divorced when I was a kid too, so there was no assistance to my mom. You do the math.

Yes, this woman is being made an example of, and yes, the public school system is unfair and crappy as all get out, but for the time being that's just how it goes.

 

[Jaythulhu]

Wait, what? You can't send your kids to a school of your choice, regardless of where it is in America? They put you in gaol if you do? Wow..... just..... wow.

 

[Requx]

Humanity: She should be able to get her children the best future possible.
Greed: WE NEED MOAR MUNEYZ DONT CARE ABOUT FAMILEZ

 

[Alorxico]

Quotes from the article:

(1) "Williams-Bolar decided ...to send her daughters to ... Copley-Fairlawn School District.... But it wasn't her Akron district of residence ... though her father lived within the district's boundaries."
(2) "Williams-Bolar said she did it to keep her children safe and that she lived part-time with her dad."
(3) "....school officials said she was cheating because her daughters received a quality education without paying taxes to fund it."

She was trying to improve the education of her children and her father LIVED in that District. Unless the Ohio School System is just working off of moon logic, there are ways to allow the girls to attend. I mean, children of Divorcees, who live with Mom half the year and Dad the rest of the year, do it! If the girls lived with their grandfather for AT LEAST half the school year, they should be able to attend a school in that district!

And even if they didn't, there are OTHER ways to enroll your student in a school in a district in which they do not live. Some states need them to pass academic tests to show they can keep up with their peers, while others just simply need the parents to prove they have a ride to and from the school itself.

I am also HIGHLY skeptical that there is a LAW being broken here. I could be wrong, there could be something on the law books that says a child can only attend school in the district in which their parents pay taxes, but last I checked STATE taxes go to the STATE, not the county or school district, and they cover EVERYTHING! But, I could be wrong, there could be District or County Taxes about which I do not know.

Again, assuming there is a law on the books that limits where a child can attend school (which I highly doubt, but I could be wrong), she did "break the law" and should be punished. HOWEVER, a $30K fine is NOT justice! Think about it! If she didn't have the money to MOVE herself into the District and prevent this whole madness in the beginning, WHAT makes you think she has it now?!

Also, claiming she owes $30K to the district to pay for the education of her children basically announces to the whole world that you HONESTLY believe your teachers and their efforts are worth that much money and anyone making LESS than that is unworthy of their skills and talents!

If that's the case, Mister School Official, you had BETTER give every single penny of that $30K to the teachers who taught those girls and NOT as part of the bonus you are going to give yourself and the other School Officials in the Downtown office that NEVER have to deal with this kids except as numbers on the End of Grade Tests! Because your "District" isn't one of the best because of you, Mister or Misses School Official, it is because of those men and women who spend eight to ten hours a day educating the next generation!

 

[Bernzz]

Gonna say what others have already said: morally, she's in the right. Legally, she's in the wrong.

 

[Xpwn3ntial]

I also thought it was really weird that she went to jail for this. I think it's a punishment more severe than it should be (probably her lawyer was pretty bad), and now that you mentioned it, making some people an example by punishing them harder than the usual really seems to be a very bad idea. Now the prosecutor and the school have made more damage than she would have done if her kids have continued studying in that school, don't you agree?

How crippling do you think the crime-appropriate fine would have been? Or work-avoiding community service? Jail was probably the ideal situation for her.

OT: People may not like it, but she was wrong on all fronts. Wanting your child to get a better education does not justify fraud, and that idea en masse is only detrimental.

 

[epunk35]

She broke the law. It sucks, but it is a law nonetheless. Laws are put in place for a reason. If you don't agree with the law, there are avenues availiable to try and have it changed. She had options. She knew the risks when she made her decision to commit a felony. She got caught. Thats life...

This, it sucks but tough luck. The road to hell is paved with good intention as they say.

 

[YuzL]

I feel kinda stupid I live less than a hour away from that place, and never heard of this story. But in Ohio our education system works where for where I live (Which might as well be in the middle of BFE)but I can see where in a inner city like Akron you can get a little screwed over.

In my town we have open enrollment which pretty much means if you can get your butt here you can be a student. But the town across the river have closed enrollment so that you have to live with in the city limits to be called a student.

But what she did was morally right but legally wrong(Has been said). But I know from first hand experience that she could have taken some who has paid there taxes for their kid to go there to only be rejected for someone out of the district. Not to mention she forged legal documents and she only got ten days in the slammer.

 

[Kryzantine]

There is a very unfortunate conflict here. If the mother sends her kids to the zone school knowing their education suffers, it reflects badly on her. If she sends her kids to a much better school, but has to break the law to do so, then she's committing a crime and it reflects badly on her. But she'll value her children much more than herself, so she'll commit the crime.

That's the unfortunate state of affairs in some parts of America. I'm fortunate enough to live in NYC and go to a public school that took me on merit and not on my living location, but I know that I'm more fortunate than most of America. It's sad, really. I don't think zone schooling is a good system at all.