St. Louis-area school district aggressively audits student housing, citing ‘educational larceny’
www.stlpr.org
Since the 2018-19 school year, the Hazelwood School District has sharply increased its rate of investigating student residency eightfold, deploying a team of employees who can use intrusive tactics.

In March, a frustrated parent wrote an email to the Hazelwood School District. Her daughter had been kicked out of Jamestown Elementary School after the district conducted an investigation into where the family lived.

In the email, the mother complained that her daughter had been wrongly removed and could not return to school.

“How is it considering a student’s well being, to be pulled out of school less than three months before the end of the year,” she wrote.

The mother’s email is one of more than 100 communications between families and the Hazelwood School District appealing decisions that children could not attend its schools. The Midwest Newsroom and St. Louis Public Radio obtained the trove of emails through a public records request.

The mother, whose name is redacted in the records, wrote that even after her child was removed from school, district officials could not answer her questions about the investigation — nor why the school district even conducted the investigation.

“Hazelwood took it upon themselves to hire an investigator and follow me and my child, causing anxiety and fearing [sic] for my life not knowing who is watching us,” the mother wrote. “I feel like my daughter has been targeted and singled out for no apparent reason and with no explanation.”

Missouri students attending public school must enroll where their guardians pay property taxes — with some exceptions. Many districts use investigations to confirm where students live. The communications between parents and guardians and the Hazelwood School District — amounting to more than a thousand pages — paint the picture of an inflexible and inscrutable residency investigation system.

Other records obtained for this article show that the Hazelwood School District has ramped up the rate of its investigations in the past five school years and appears to be conducting significantly more than other local school districts.

(To be continued in the article)

  • FuglyDuck@lemmy.worldEnglish
    162·
    1 year ago
    1. there was less than 3 months left in the school year.
    2. they hired somebody to literaly stalk them
    3. it’s apparently fairly common,
    4. the requirement is “where they pay taxes”…. So it should be incredibly easy to verify they’re paying property taxes in their district without ever doing more than a quick records search.

    This is ignoring the high likelihood it’s entirely predicated on race. My guess without ever looking into it is that this district is predominantly white, and is nominally well funded compared to predominantly black districts… which leads to people wanting their kids in better schools and “draining” funds. (A lot of school funding comes from property taxes at the city level. Which creates inequality with affluent areas spending more, for their kids, etc.)

      • FuglyDuck@lemmy.worldEnglish
        21·
        1 year ago

        in the US, or at least where I’m at in the US, landlords collect your property taxes and pass it on- kinda like how stores collect sales tax and pass it on.