I hope Eric Johnson, Earl Earhardt and others pay attention to this news story.
Houston County’s District Attorney and School Superintendent are intent on jailing parents for sending their kids to public school.
To be fair, they are in a damned if you do, damned if you don’t situation.
There are some crummy schools in Houston County and many surrounding counties have even worse schools. So parents are sending their children to some really good Houston County schools outside of their zones. They file affidavits to do so and, it turns out, a lot of the people doing this are lying.
People are so desperate to get their kids out of failing schools, they are risking jail.
Houston is in a difficult position.
“It is not fair for our taxpayers to pay to educate those who live outside of Houston County as well as those who reside in Houston, but want their children to attend an out-of-zone school,” Carpenter said.
Last year, Houston County schools spent $11,970 on average per child, $3,000 of that coming from local taxes.
The school system has seen explosive growth in the last few years, adding 651 students last year, consistent with growth from previous years, said Superintendent Carpenter. Houston County now serves nearly 27,000 students. In addition, Houston County students attending schools outside of their zones are putting a strain on the system by forcing officials to transfer teachers to serve student population demand.
“We can’t build schools fast enough to accommodate our students now,” Carpenter said.
If parents were given greater choice and flexibility in sending their kids to school by having the money follow the child, even across county lines, we wouldn’t see stories like this.
Something needs to be done.
{ 37 comments }
Well, I guess they could start by pronouncing the name of the county correctly.
http://www.votemonds.com/issues_education.html
Over and over again the argument is made for school choice in circumstances like this. We passed a bill last year which would have at least given the opportunity for intradistrict transfer from failing schools. By the time the EDUCRAT establishment at the state board and the local systems were through with their regs it was all but eviscerated.
Once again the states children are the losers to the professional apologists educrats.
They are being jailed for theft of services and committing fraud. There is no way to sugarcoat this.
DD,
However it is an example in how government being in areas that they have no business being in (intervention) and then having to adopt more and more rules and regs (more intervention) to try to make it work, result in normally law abiding citizens becoming criminals. I guess the silver lining for the statist is that this news of these heinous criminal parents(sarcasm) distracts from the fact that the schools they were trying to avoid, still suck.
No one should sign an affidavit, lie on that document, & get away with it. They chose any consequences when they chose to give false info. At the least, there should be a fine. Jail is not a good idea.
I am assuming that Houston County does not allow non-residents to pay a fee & enter the system, since their growth has been extensive. So, those caught ought to be able to pay the fine (at least $1k) , the $3k school tax, & then go back to the county they pay taxes in next year. So, in essence they get more than a double fine.
If they don’t do this, then send them back by an immediate deadline this year, bill the parents, & seek to collect in court if need be.
Now that the business end has been dealt with in a tough way, then let’s deal with the real problem. The real problem is that parents ought to have choices with their tax money, and currently they don’t have it.
This story underscores in my mind why eehrhart’s comments hit the spot.
We had a situation here in Dade County a few years ago something like this. In a small county where everyone knows almost everyone one of the worst kept secrets going was that a substantial number of students attending our school system of only about 2500 kids, did not live in Dade County or even in Georgia. Being here in the corner of the state and bordering Tennessee and Alabama quite a few out of state parents would bring their kids to school in Trenton and register them giving a relative’s Dade County address. You could not get a mailbox at a Post Office in Dade County because of the people from Alabama and Tennessee who got one to have a Georgia address. Believe it or not even with how bad we think our schools are the surrounding TN and AL counties are evidently worse.
I and a few others complained enough that the school system finally decided to crack down and investigate where kids lived and start charging tuition if you didn’t live in Dade. The next year enrollment was down by almost 10%. I haven’t been watching so it may have inched back up but that was proof that Dade property owners and Georgia taxpayers were subsidizing kids from outside the county and state. I’d be willing to bet you have the same issue in many, if not all the counties that share a border with another state. Why doesn’t the legislature make it a felony for people to do this. This is theft of services pure and simple as far as I’m concerned. If you’re looking for places to save money why not start with ending the subsidy Georgia pays for out of state K-12 students. I know why local school systems don’t complain. They get money based on headcount whether the kids are from here or from Mars. The state however, should care.
They get money based on headcount whether the kids are from here or from Mars.
Aliens need a good education, too, you know.
I do not grok that.
Why doesn’t the legislature make it a felony for people to do this.
One, I’d rather pay $8500 a year per student than $20,000 a year per jailed parent.
Two, Just another “rule,” Band-Aid that doesn’t fix the underlying problem… government (monopoly) school system/lack of competition/over regulation of a service that free-market solutions could fix by providing a better service without having to jail anyone.
Don’t get me wrong. We home school. I pay 70+% of my property tax bill to the school system and my daughter will never set foot in it. If government is going to be involved at all in education I’m all for vouchers. I’d rather see government get completely out of the business of education because as long as there are politicians involved the system will never get any better.
Ramblinwreck,
I know you know… just used something you wrote to make a point. I home school my #last as well… however, some people are now being arrested for that… due to “new rules”.
Murderer’s cost us even more a year in maximum security prison. If they murder someone who is a burden to society, using your logic, we should just dismiss the case.
We do not prosecute criminals out of a profit motive. This is why I do not trust privatization of the criminal justice system. We prosecute criminals to maintain order. Allowing people to commit fraud and steal from others (which is exactly what they are doing) destroys respect for the law and deteriorates society. There are legitimate victims here, the taxpayers of Houston County, no matter how hard you try to ignore that.
By all means, push for a law to allow school choice, but until then, these people are no better than someone stealing a car or anything else of value. They should feel lucky that Houston County is warning them and giving them an opportunity to come clean before taking more serious action.
DD,
My point was to use “the profit motive” and free market in our education system not our criminal system.
The other point was if you’re going to do something, don’t add to the problem (and increase the cost to the taxpayers), fix the actual problem.
(Until then, yes, hold people accountable/responsible for their actions.)
But to keep applying Band-Aid, after Band-Aid, after Band-Aid… doesn’t improve anything, but makes it worse. It’s time to start removing them… for the underlying festering problem is still there,… government run education (the public option).
I don’t see the issue here. You file a false affidavit, you are committing a crime. You want to go to Houston County schools? Either move to Houston County or get a relative or friend within the county to be a temporary guardian for your child and file a legitimate affidavit. Those are the rules. It’s not that complicated.
Don’t get me wrong… hold people responsible for their actions. But, if we would fix the underlying problem… “the rules” wouldn’t be necessary.
Byte,
The problem is complicated because if you give guardianship to a relative they have to claim the child as a dependent for tax purposes, if being legal counts, and they will NOT do that. At least that’s what they tried here. Only threat of taking them to jail had any effect but the school administration has to bring the charges and if they don’t do it it won’t happen.
In your case, the out-of-staters could just ignore the county-imposed fine, so threat of jail is pretty much all that’s left. Or maybe jailing the child when they set foot in school with bail set at the amount of tuition. Yeah, that’ll get those headlines going!
Anyway, there is not “underlying problem”, DNA, except the one you’ve identified for yourself. Public schools are fine. As a student, you get back what you put into your education. It has always been that way.
And vouchers are just a way to screw poor people out of a good education (because poor people are much less likely to be able to transport their kids to a better school).
“And vouchers are just a way to screw poor people out of a good education (because poor people are much less likely to be able to transport their kids to a better school).”
How? What is being taken away from poor people in this case? Everyone is given an option to do more than they presently can. As is stands now their kids are sent to a particular school whether they like it or not. If/when vouchers are available then they can still send their kids to the same school they already are going to. Zero net change for those parents that can’t or won’t send their children elsewhere.
And I’m willing to bet that there are plenty of “poor” folks that WILL take that opportunity and come up with a way to send there children to a different school if they believe they will get a better education elsewhere. The parents that care enough will MAKE transportation happen. They’ll find somene else for their children to ride with, they will set up car pools, change work schedules ect ect ect.
How?
Easy: you have a not-so-great school in an area. Poor kids and middle class kids maybe even some rich ones.
Ok, here’s how the “voucher scam” works: the money to fund that school comes from the vouchers used in the school. The kids with parents who can truck them across town in the morning to a better school move their money out of the local school and into another school, where they can then afford better teachers, better administrators, better books, and so on. The poor kids who can’t get trucked across town? They’re stuck with LESS money, worse teachers, worse administrators.
So what you “inadvertently” create from this situation is an institutionalized underclass. I put “inadvertently” in quotes, because for some preachers of the voucher religion, that’s their intent anyway: to screw the poor before they get screwed by the poor.
Notice I didn’t comment on the “rich” kids whose parents can afford to send them to private schools and will do so regardless of whether they get a voucher to help pay for it. With vouchers, those kids suck more money out of the entire public school system, further screwing the people who can’t afford to send their kids elsewhere.
You hate public schools? Fine. Admit that out loud and then let’s deal with it honestly. You claim to like public schools, but want to use vouchers to defund them so that they fail… well, that’s just a dishonest scam.
I have a feeling that if these were undocumented immigrants, your headline wouldn’t be “Immigrants jailed for seeking better life.”
I thought the same thing.
So Doug is agreeing with me, Byte, Terran1212, and me again (or now rather).
Yes, the stupid is strong within you today Doug!
BTW: has anyone considered the fact that fixing the schools rather than just making it possible to overcrowd the better ones (which will ultimately drive down quality in the latter) is probably the best way to go? I mean I’m not exactly sure what is “solved” if children can go to any school there parents desire.
Yes, the stupid is strong within you today Doug!
Hey, I represent that remark!
I personify it.
As for your other comment about the quality of school issue: for the out-of-county folks, that’s not so easy to do from within Houston County, but for the ones that are just “out of zone”… you gotta wonder how Houston County school board is not being slammed about that. You’d think they’d publicly change their procedures to reassign the best performing teachers and admins (with a pay bump) to the worst performing schools, which would keep parents from relying on last year’s scores to figure out where the best teachers were going to end up.
I suspect the reason the school is looking into this is because these students are causing trouble and it is easy to get rid of them if they do not live in the district. By the way, I sent my children to school in Bibb County and they received a good education and were admitted to good colleges where they have done well.
The only time the schools ever looked into residence issues was to get rid of the bad kids. Parents will take the time to lie for their children and then do not make them behave.
Sounds like there’s some competition between school systems (and even within school systems) as to who provides the best education.
As competition is now officially un-American, I hope that this will be stopped at once. Perhaps a law which declares that all children must be graduated with 3.6 GPAs will level the playing field.
Didn’t Ronald Reagan encourage people to vote with their feet?
If one local government services aren’t meeting your needs, you should move to the place that meets your needs. For some people, an excellent school is the motivation for their housing choice. These parents usually recognize the importance of schools and plan for accordingly. Commiting fraud is not necessary, nor excuseable. Advance planning can help avoid such a predicament. Local school systems can not accomodate and should not have to accomodate everybody from outside of their district that shows up at their door.
” Local school systems can not accomodate and should not have to accomodate everybody from outside of their district that shows up at their door.”
Anyone remember HB1187? Roy Barnes’ education reform? It mandated exactly that.
Yeah, but he’s a godless leftist socialist marxist nazi, so it must have been a bad thing whatever it was he wanted to do. Rush told me so.
The solution, ladies and gentlemen, is quite simple.
Locate all the failing government hospitals in the same districts as the failing government schools. Then, when a child is born, its chances of surviving to age 5 drastically drop, freeing up resources in the failed government school to educate the ones that remain. Furthermore, failing government hospitals can be incentivized to botch c-sections, furthers limiting the damage done to the government schools(1).
Of course this only works if hospitals are assigned to citizen the way schools are now. Something we should be lobbying the Congress to implement in their upcoming reform proposals.
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1) Think of the Carbon Benefits to this proposal too. Fewer babies mean fewer diapers to dispose of, fewer trips to the daycare/store/Six Flags, and fewer carbon spewing busses on the road.
“Of course this only works if hospitals are assigned to citizen the way schools are now. Something we should be lobbying the Congress to implement in their upcoming reform proposals.”
Did you look on page 35.2 x 10^5 of 53.7 x 10^8 of H.R. 3200? It’s probably in there somewhere.
If parents were given greater choice and flexibility in sending their kids to school by having the money follow the child, even across county lines, we wouldn’t see stories like this.
This is a recipe for further destruction to the public school system.
Of course it is. That’s why it’s never going to happen, but will continue to be a fringe cause for some people.
I must have misread the title of this post.
I mean, the title says, “Houston County to Jail Parents for Educating Their Children.” But then Erick writes, “Houston County’s District Attorney and School Superintendent are intent on jailing parents for sending their kids to public school.”
So which is it? Are parents going to be jailed for educating their children, or for sending their children to public school?
Big difference.
Witty. +1 for something that fell through the cracks.
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