Alexandria, Va. – January 10, 2007 – School districts, education agencies, and even municipal governments are increasing their attention on curtailing boundary hopping – the practice of falsifying residency status to attend a specific school, according to the cover story of the January issue of American School Board Journal.   

"With fewer than a quarter of states offering open enrollment programs, the only choice for most families, at least as far as they can see, is to cheat the system," writes ASBJ senior editor Naomi Dillion in "Crossing the Line." 

Different reasons drive different families, according to ASBJ. For many, it is purely about providing their children with a better education, which may translate into better services, more rigorous academics, or specialized programs.

"All districts aren't the same and parents see that," says Hank Langhals, director of student services for Gahanna-Jefferson Schools in Ohio. "They can't afford to move, but they want to do what's best for their child."

The Journal examines how school districts across the country are addressing the border issue and dealing with the growth in illegal registration, which often involves the use of a friend's or relative's address, but can also include fake leases and false identification.

Every year, the Fort Mill School District in South Carolina is absorbing 700 to 800 new students a year and building a new school to keep up with the growth, which has taxed the district's budget. The school board placed an enrollment freeze on several schools and instituted a new and tougher residency requirement.

Taxpayers in California's Antioch Unified School District went a step further. When the high school's population swelled and mobile units were brought in to accommodate the influx, residents filed claims that out-of-town students were filling the school. Eventually, a Contra Costa County civil grand jury conducted an investigation. The jury determined the district was doing everything it could to maintain an accurate student roster.  

Grosse Point Public Schools, a suburb of Detroit, spent more than $8,000 to re-register each of its nearly 9,000 students to find and remove out-of-district students.    In the end, the district found only 40 students in that category.

Dillion writes that the main reason for enforcing student residency requirements is the cost to local taxpayers of educating out-of-district students.  But some district officials are just as anxious about what outsiders do to their test scores.

"For us to take in large numbers of students from neighboring districts that are low performing, our scores would be impacted adversely," says Rick Scherza, superintendent of Cranston Public Schools in Rhode Island. "There is no immunity for us helping out other districts. It would be a good deed that gets punished."

The article, "Crossing the Line," can be found on the American School Board Journal Web site at www.asbj.com .

Founded in 1891, the American School Board Journal is an award-winning, editorially independent education magazine published monthly by the National School Boards Association.