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

[crudus]

Legally wrong? Yes. Justified? no. Rationalized? Oh Goddess yes. There are a few different ways she could have gone about this. She could have gotten and apartment or a house in the district. Or she could have moved in with her father.

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

It is the 3 years probation and community service that is probably the killer. They can understand why she did it so I imagine they would want to go easy on her while still trying to deter other people.

Wait... my parents did this... I didn't know you could get arrested...<.<

[/quote]

Depends if your parents paid tuition. Where I live you can go to a school out of your district if you paid tuition.

 

[Sacman]

Wait... my parents did this... I didn't know you could get arrested...<.<

Your parents falsified documents to get you into a different school? Or did you just go to a school a bit farther away from your residence...one is illegal, since you know...falsification. The other one, not so much.

Well we were using another persons address as our own... so... yeah...<.<

 

[blindthrall]

It's theft of services somebody else paid for, that simple. Imagine if you'd just paid a hooker for a blowjob, then just as she's opening her mouth, I swoop in and stick my knob in there. And she finishes me and and gives you a sub-par handjob. It's the same thing, except people don't have any faces to put on the people this woman was stealing from. It's much more acceptable to steal from a faceless conglomerate than an individual, even moreso when that conglomerate is the government.

 

[mitchell271]

She is WAYYY in the wrong. If she wanted them there so badly she should have just moved over that little bit. The taxs from that area support that school. On top of that she falsified court documents saying she lived somewhere she didn't.

She refused to pay the fine. She lived in a poor and crime-ridden part of the town. Don't you think she would have if she could?

Lying about her residency? Ya, that is illegal for a number of reasons. Its just another case of being morally right while being lawfully wrong.

If only she lived in Cleveland, Ohio, they actually have a Voucher system her kids could use.

Hell, if they lived up here in Canada, she could just get a cross-boundary transfer.

Anyways, it was justified, her kids deserve a better life and the fact that the school board is bitching about not getting the taxes they "need" from her when they are willing to spend millions to hire legal services and hiring someone who, for all intensive purposes, stalking her, is bullshit.

 

[Amaury_games]

I don't know what to say exactly... First, I'd like to make sure if I got this straight: In USA, if you live in certain places, you can't go to certain schools, even if you drive yourself/your kids there? Or get there by public transport, or taxi, anyway, even if transport is not the issue? Are there extra taxes for people that live too far from the school? These taxes are paid TO the school?

 

[Schmeev]

The problem here is that no one seems to have looked at the original school and considered what made it such a bad school. I'll guess teachers. In that case, file complaints that the teachers are unfit to teach. No one cares? Get more parents in. Instead of being selfish and breaking laws to move your kids to the better school while others are stuck with the apparently terrible one, stop ignoring and avoiding the problem and try to fix it.

 

[SirDoom]

Wait just a second... her father lived in the district, and she lived outside of it. Technically, one parent WAS paying the taxes needed to fund the school in the first place. This whole mess is one big bundle of red tape.

I can potentially see the reason though. While my high school was centrally located and not really bad or good, my town's middle and elementary schools were located more towards the fringes of town. As a result, you had three different districts. If you lived in the newer and more expensive suburbs, you got the good schools. If you lived on the more rural side of town, you got the smaller and older (but still pretty good) schools. If you lived in the old part of town (cheaper houses, kind of an inner-city feel), you got schools that had to be treated like prisons, due to a mostly-horrible student body. Nobody in their right mind would send their kids to that last set if they could help it.


Zoning is good for everybody but those stuck in one of the bad schools, yes. But still, it's wrong.

 

[Jodah]

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.

 

[Amaury_games]

Well, even without the knowledge about the law, unfortunately she broke it in order to make a very good decision about her kids' future. I wonder if she could have tried to make a deal so her kids could go there and she wouldn't have to pay all the money, or pay it in more time.

One thing that bugs me is why the school payed a private detective to investigate her in particular (or she wasn't he only one being investigated). I wonder what caught up their attention about her that made them go that far... (I'm not trying to imply anything by this; I'm really wondering how did they get suspicious about where she really lived).

 

[jack583]

i'd rather have gotten a crappy education if it was legal (and i did), then have a good education illegaly.

 

[NickCooley]

What a shitty system. For once I'm glad I was born in the UK.

 

[Jodah]

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

First, you need to calm down before you end up getting banned. That being said, I am not saying one should not fight against an unjust law. I am saying you need to be ready to accept the punishment for breaking said law. When Rosa Parks sat in the front seat on the bus she accepted the punishment. She did not whine and cry when she was arrested. We all know that law was unjust but that does not give anyone permission to break it without consequences.

 

[Sutter Cane]

I don't know what to say exactly... First, I'd like to make sure if I got this straight: In USA, if you live in certain places, you can't go to certain schools, even if you drive yourself/your kids there? Or get there by public transport, or taxi, anyway, even if transport is not the issue? Are there extra taxes for people that live too far from the school? These taxes are paid TO the school?

If you live in the US the public school you attend is assigned by the location where you live. You cannot attend a public school other than the one you are assigned to (in most places). If you don't want your child to go to the assigned school, you either have to fork up the money to send them to private school or homeschool them. Transportation is not the issue

 

[StBishop]

So you only get as much education as you're willing to pay for? So that's where Cameron got the idea from.

That's pretty much how property tax funded education works in practice. It's stupid, it should be based off of a statewide budget appropriated to schools based on size.

Other interesting information about this is that the woman is a teacher's aide in her own school district.

That's how it's done here, in Australia.

The current system in the United States seems wrought with problems.

 

[Zechnophobe]

Reading most of the short opinions in this thread, and it really makes you appreciate why things can sometimes go wrong. I mean, this is a tricky subject I guess. But there are some clear points against her. It isn't a victimless crime. The cost to educate a student is pretty substantial. The zoning systems we use for the expenditure of government monies is not unimportant. It is how we maintain a certain level of order.

I feel this is a little too bleeding heart. She was 'doing it for the children', I guess. And I don't doubt that this comment is true, but it seems to overstate the severity of the situation. Clearly her course of action could not be taken by all members of the population, or the school would quickly run out of funding.

 

[Blue_vision]

Seems like rather derpy laws to me, but then again I live in a country where all education is free and where you can choose to attend a school in the other end of the nation as long as you pay for your transport yourself.

It's cool, because where I am, they'll literally pay for transportation halfway across the city if there's a good reason for living so far from the school (sometimes as simple as a good music program.)

And yeah, I'm actually astounded that 25% say she wasn't justified. Free, equal education to all is not only the way to vastly improve people's lifestyles, from economic opportunity to personal satisfaction (both statistically proven,) but it's also the key to a well-functioning democracy, as has been pointed out by the initial founders of democracy. I'm kind of confused as to how the US, the self-acclaimed stronghold of democracy, ignores this most important fact of government after "the people have a say in what the country does."

 

[LitleWaffle]

So I think everyone deserves an equal opportunity, but of course that would be COMMUNIST! and it will bring DEATH to the almighty USA!

Damn.. he's on to us.

I'm not sure if that's hilarious, or scary as hell.

OT: You know, I would say it is morally right and lawfully wrong, but couldn't she have given the kids to her dad over the weekdays and he used his name and stayed with her over the weekends or something?

In her situation it wasn't the best choice to make false documents, I think that's crossing the line.

 

[stompy]

Snip

Campaigning against a law considered immoral is a fundamental right in democracies like the US. However, like tanis said, if you break the law (regardless of whether the law is immoral), you have to face the punishment. There's no point in trying to work through a system to get change if you undermine the system when doing so.

As for the topic, the woman committed a crime in falsifying her documents, so she should face punishment. Despite that, I find it morally reprehensible that such a system exists in the so-called 'Land of the Free'. How can a basic right like education be determined on the socio-economic status of your parents?

 

[Amaury_games]

I don't know what to say exactly... First, I'd like to make sure if I got this straight: In USA, if you live in certain places, you can't go to certain schools, even if you drive yourself/your kids there? Or get there by public transport, or taxi, anyway, even if transport is not the issue? Are there extra taxes for people that live too far from the school? These taxes are paid TO the school?

If you live in the US the public school you attend is assigned by the location where you live. You cannot attend a public school other than the one you are assigned to (in most places). If you don't want your child to go to the assigned school, you either have to fork up the money to send them to private school or homeschool them. Transportation is not the issue

How... intriguing... Why is that? If transport is nor the issue, then why does it matter where people live? Probably the answer to those questions will be the taxes issue, but I still don't get it... unless the neighborhood is responsible for paying the schools. If it's the city, then it shouldn't matter where people live, if they live in the same city, right?

PS: Hum... I wonder if THIS should be a topic of its own.

 

[XenonZaleo]

Oh Internet, you're so cute with your utter lack of concept of paying for things or any sort of long term planning. Never Change. =D

-_-

Or grow the **** up and realize that there's a reason things are the way they are. Does the public primary education system in the USA need work? Yeah. It does. Are you stuck with it until more sweeping reforms take place? Yes. You go to the school that services your area, because 1) for rural americans that's the only one within a reasonable distance. and 2) that's the school that received the resources that are used to teach your child. No, one kid hopping over the line isn't going to make a difference, but if you let one, more will come, more will come and then the "better" school will just be brought down because there are so many kids that it's a mess.

She's not morally or legally in the right. She's just selfish.