When Choosing Your Child’s Public School Is Criminal
20 05 2007It’s not even home education the parent wants the right to choose this time, but public schools!
And we’re talking a native apple-pie mom (minority at that) –
Even if illegal immigrants are dangerous criminals cheating us all, whose own babies and children legal Americans or not, are so unjustly sapping our public health and education benefits that their parents deserve to be fined or locked up, we don’t wish on them the punishment that “we the people” sought against Jeanine Echols, a full-fledged English-speaking American citizen and taxpayer. She sent her honor-roll kids to Georgia’s free public schools — just not the particular schools the local district was willing to let them choose, without demanding they pay “tuition”!
The mom preferred the schools close to Grandma’s house.
Does this family’s administratively illegal education choice make the mom a public menace, a dangerous felon subject to a maximum 80 years in prison on multiple fraud counts? I heard the prosecutor on CNN yesterday say that while we may think it harsh, “it’s a crime when you lie to the government” and so he had no choice. (I don’t hear that much about illegal immigrant parents, hmmm . . .)
See what the public-representing jury of her peers decided yesterday . . .
It’s not clear to me from the news articles which district, which school, the children would have gone to. I’d like to see a comparison between that school and the one they did attend. What was the difference that drove this family to make this extraordinary effort?
Nance
Yep, differences that extraordinary between “public” schools in the same community can be a crime in itself.
The explanation her attorney gave on tv was geography, that both parents travel for their jobs so the kids often need to ride the bus home to granny’s house and stay with her. Granny’s house is in the right zone and if the kids technically “lived” in her house fulltime, there would be no issue. Apparently there were other addresses given at one time or another though, places they did “control” as a family but not necessarily as their “home” so I agree those schools must’ve an upgrade rather than a step down for her kids. Otherwise she wouldn’t have worked so hard at all this.
What bugs me is the moralistic raving (coupled with all kinds of interference up to outright extortion and felony prosecution of a GOOD mom!) from government institutions that won’t practice what they preach about no child left behind and family values and education instead of FTE factory farming.
Here’s a very similar tale — Daryl points out this morning that his son was born “illegally” according to the hyperlegalistic control model of supporting private family values.
Apparently moms and dads making informed decisions as they see fit for their own children, and then all doing well and being healthy and happy together, is just irrelevant to the State, and maybe even to the fourth estate:
I don’t want either the Market OR the State taking direct responsibility for my child as their work product! Imo it smacks of Rob Reich arguing the State’s interest in protecting children from their own parents’ teaching, overseeing every aspect of their private lives even when the parents are doing nothing harmful, much less neglectful or abusive.
The dad gets the last line:
“It’s been tough. We just want to go home.”
I’ll bet. They will go home to whichever of all those addresses feels most like home for them, no matter what government records designate as their official family residence. Maybe the parents have gotten a very expensive public education from this experience, whether their kids did or not.
You see why definition absolutism makes me crazy??
What bugs me is the moralistic raving (coupled with all kinds of interference up to outright extortion and felony prosecution of a GOOD mom!) from government institutions that won’t practice what they preach about no child left behind and family values and education instead of FTE factory farming.
**
Yes. A given in our circles. I hope.
What has fascinated me in all the coverage has been the lack of focus on the disparity, if there is one and I seem to remember there was a mention of the Mom wanting her children to attend “good” schools, between the schools involved.
Is it just so accepted that the haves have and the have-nots are supposed to put up with less that I am stupid to expect this to be mentioned in the TV and newspaper coverage?
And is this even a question of the haves and have-nots? The Mom seems (as a recall) to think so. Why does she think that? Crumbling buildings, better sports programs (one reporter keeps giving that as a reason some parents do this), violence in one school and not the other, test scores??? What perceived or real reason underlies all this deception and why isn’t anyone talking about that?
I know in our area there is a very upscale neighborhood that has started cracking down on poorer families sneaking their kids in. There we have racism and class differences and perceived, if not convincing from outside the system, benefits of attending an “A” school versus a “C” school.
The family in this article is black. Is that a factor? It is difficult to tell and almost like it is rude to ask.
Nance
Thanks for sharing this story.
I agree, the differences btw schools is the real crime here and everywhere.
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