Schools
D86 Moves Forward With Residency Crackdown
Board members unanimously approved the hiring of a firm to help keep non-residents from registering for the 2014-15 school year.
The Hinsdale Township High School District 86 Board of Education voted unanimously Monday night to move forward with its crackdown on students attending Hinsdale Central and Hinsdale South despite not living within the district’s borders.
The vote authorized the hiring of American Heritage Protective Services, Inc., to investigate 131 current students who are suspected of living outside of the district and help the district implement an improved residency-check system in advance of January’s 2014-15 registration.
The board approved $27,500 worth of American Heritages service, with the option of approving more next month if need be.
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“With course registration upon us, we are aggressively moving forward to ensure that the tallies we use to determine the number of teachers we need for the 2014-15 school year are based on students who verifiably live in the district’s attendance area,” a memo from superintendent Bruce Law to board members reads. “To fulfill this obligation to taxpayers, we have checked addresses in our student information system against databases, which resulted in discrepancies requiring further investigation.”
Law wrote in the memo that, with the assistance of American Heritage, the next steps will be:
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- “Send certified letters to families whose residency is in question and ask them to provide proof of residency.”
- “Initiate more intensive investigation of families whose residency in the district cannot be verified.”
- “Where necessary, follow the statutory process as outlined in 105 ILCS 5/10-20.12b.”
- “Verify residency of incoming freshmen before their course selections are used to create tallies for determining FTE. The District will continue to require proof residency of all freshmen each year prior to registration.”
- “Require proof of residency of all students before enrolling for the 2014-15 school year.”
The 131 students whose residency is currently being questioned came from a list of 475 students who a separate firm, not American Heritage, flagged.
Board president Claudia Manley said she didn’t think the 475-student list was comprehensive.
“Some people that should be on there that aren’t on there,” Manley said. “I know that for a fact.”
Board member Ed Corcoran said he thinks the board needs to look back at what led to the enrollment of non-residents.
“Why did it happen and who didn’t do their job is one big question, a looming question to me,” Corcoran said.
Corcoran also suggested going out to bid for the services being provided by American Heritage in future years.
Law said such a firm could be needed for the next two or three years, but Pollack said that may not be the case.
“If this is approved tonight I would really suspect you’re going to see a number of parents [de-enroll] their kids within the next couple of weeks, probably after the Christmas break,” Pollack said. “We tend to become victims of our own success.”
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