In an attempt to crack down on children being sneaked across county lines in search of better schools, Fayette County is charging $8,000 per child in back tuition of parents who falsely claim residency, Channel 2 Action News reports.
"We know we have them here. But we need people to tip us off and let us know who they are," Fayette schools spokeswoman Melinda Berry-Dreisbach told Channel 2.
“I had a resident in a neighborhood contact me because he saw a lot of cars with Fulton County tags dropping kids off at the bus stop,” the spokeswoman said. Some parents, she added, "go rent an apartment and never live in it."
During the past two years, the Fayette district has caught 255 elementary, middle and high school students attending their schools illegally. It has collected $60,000 total from the parents of such students, Berry-Dreisbach said.
Stealth enrollments became an issue for neighbors of Clayton County several years ago when the temporary loss of accreditation for that district prompted an exodus of schoolchildren to neighboring Fayette, Fulton and Henry counties.
Many families moved, but some tried to slip their kids across the county line.
In 2009, a Henry County jury found a Clayton woman and her brother-in-law from McDonough guilty of “making a false writing” by in enrolling the woman’s son in a Henry County high school.
The defendants received probation and were ordered to pay a $1,000 fine and reimburse the school district nearly $1,200 in tuition costs.
To deter unlawful enrollments, Fulton County schools require parents to submit a notarized affidavit of residence for each student. Proof of residency also is required for newly enrolled students, children entering the sixth or ninth grades and students who have moved since submitting their last affidavit.
Fayette parents told Channel 2 that enforcing residency is a matter of fairness.
"They need to live in this county if they send their kids to school here. Just like if we went to another county, we would have to pay taxes to live in that county," Karen Niederhausen said.
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