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finchbird ([info]finchbird) wrote in [info]unfunnybusiness,
@ 2009-07-01 23:29:00
Previous Entry  Add to memories!  Tell a Friend!  Next Entry
Current mood:Pissed

It took them two years to figure this out?
Jeff Sukkasem is a U.S. citizen and legal resident of Montgomery County, with a passport, a library card and a volunteer job at a local Thai Buddhist temple. For the past two years, however, he essentially has been barred from public school.

Jeff, 14, has not set foot in a classroom since March 2007, when he left his mother and sister in the Bangkok suburbs and flew to the United States to live with family friends. The soft-spoken teen, a native of California, said he is here to resume his American life. But school officials regarded him as a visitor, sent to an affluent Washington suburb to attend its superior public schools. They said he would have to pay to do so.

The rest of the Washington Post article.


(Post a new comment)


[info]kijikun
2009-07-02 04:40 am UTC (link)
O_o The hell?

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[info]hallidae
2009-07-02 05:27 am UTC (link)
WTF, people? Two years?

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[info]inalasahl
2009-07-02 06:37 am UTC (link)
County policy, schmolicy. Isn't that a violation of federal law? Or is that only if you receive federal funding?

(Reply to this)


[info]sarracenia
2009-07-02 06:45 am UTC (link)
How the hell is that not illegal?

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[info]inalasahl
2009-07-02 05:59 pm UTC (link)
I think it is illegal. But laws like that don't really get enforced. Somebody might sue, but I bet they make darn sure not to pull this stuff on the lawyers' children.

(Reply to this)(Parent)


[info]esorlehcar
2009-07-02 09:16 am UTC (link)
I think my favorite part of this story is their justification for why the rules are set up in the first place. "No, no, it's not that we're trying to discriminate against anyone; we just want to make sure that none of the poor kids get in!"

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[info]alya1989262
2009-07-02 11:04 am UTC (link)
The dispute illuminates occasional tensions between the Washington area's high-flying suburban schools and families seeking admission. Some claim an address that is not theirs. Others send a child to stay with friends or relatives in the county.

"There are people who will do just about anything," Edwards said.

*gasp* There're people who want their kids to go to nice schools and will lie in order to do so! How awful and shocking!

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[info]lady_ganesh
2009-07-02 02:16 pm UTC (link)
There is a certain logic to that, though-- the people who are moving their kids around aren't paying taxes in that county, it's harder to figure out exactly where the kids are, etc.

But it a) just illustrates how fucked up our educational system is and b) doesn't excuse the bullshit over this kid one bit.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)


[info]alya1989262
2009-07-02 02:27 pm UTC (link)
Yeah, my point is, they're not doing it to be evil, but because there's obviously a deep problem with the educational system if there's so much disparity between schools.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)


[info]lady_ganesh
2009-07-02 02:38 pm UTC (link)
Oh, it's huge. Nationwide problem and not one I'm confident will ever be solved.

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[info]shadwing
2009-07-02 05:42 pm UTC (link)
Agreed, this is VERY common and since they pay via taxes tehy can't *not* stop the funding to the crappy schools, crappy schools have no motive to improve since they are publicly funded and will get the money to run no matter what.

This is where the 'School Voucher' system might have been able to help, it'll give students and money to the good schools and force the bad ones to shape up or shut down

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[info]inalasahl
2009-07-02 06:11 pm UTC (link)
The school voucher system would only work if schools that accepted vouchers were forced to take everyone who applies, which I have never seen in any suggested voucher law. Otherwise, it will just ghettoize the most expensive to educate kids (for example, special ed kids or severely mentally ill kids) in the schools with the least money, because you know most private schools won't take difficult kids. Even charter schools generally require parents to donate volunteer hours and such, which leaves out anyone who has to work two jobs, etc.

Absent a first-come, first-served rule for the school voucher system, it'd be a social disaster.

(Reply to this)(Parent)


[info]lady_ganesh
2009-07-02 06:19 pm UTC (link)
In addition to what [info]inalasahl says, vouchers also require parents to be somewhat invested/paying attention to their kid's education. Not all parents do that, and the kids of those parents are usually the ones who need help most.

(Reply to this)(Parent)


[info]tunxeh
2009-07-05 12:37 am UTC (link)
Vouchers are mostly a way to accelerate the decline of public schools by taking money from them and giving it to the rich people who can and do afford to send their kids to private schools.

(Reply to this)(Parent)


[info]rimrunner
2009-07-03 03:31 am UTC (link)
There really is. I attended Montgomery County public schools and they're among the best in the country. It can all get a bit...political, at times. Even if you live in the county, but want your kid to go to a different school than the one they're assigned, for example.

I'm not convinced a nationally administered system would be any better, though; seems to me you run the risk of trying to make one size fit all. No Child Left Behind was enough of a clusterfuck as it is.

(Reply to this)(Parent)


[info]inalasahl
2009-07-02 06:04 pm UTC (link)
There is a certain logic to that, though-- the people who are moving their kids around aren't paying taxes in that county, it's harder to figure out exactly where the kids are, etc.
That's irrelevant, though. What are districts going to do next, exclude homeless kids? Their parents probably aren't paying taxes or having a formal mailing address. But if the kids are sleeping in your district, you have a duty to educate them, period, regardless of the difficulty.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)


[info]lady_ganesh
2009-07-02 06:17 pm UTC (link)
I didn't say it's ethical. But every school budget is crunched at this point and to have a large number of people cheating means they can't give the students who actually live there the services they pay for.

I'm not defending this school district at all, especially in this case. I'm just saying I can see the mindset it comes from.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)


[info]kijikun
2009-07-03 06:56 am UTC (link)
If a child is living with a family friend or a family member - guess what? The person the child is living with is paying taxes! So guess what? It isn't cheating. Are we going to charge parents with multiply kids more taxes? Or maybe we should let people that don't have kids not pay certain taxes, because hey they don't have any kids to pay for the education of.

The bottom line is that they are afraid of poor or minority student in their schools.

(Reply to this)(Parent)


[info]isaiddietpepsi
2009-07-02 02:53 pm UTC (link)
As long as he was actually living in the area, who gives a shit if he was there to take advantage of the school system? Don't a lot of parents move to certain neighborhoods based on how good the schools are? It's one thing if they're actively lying about their addresses, but that doesn't appear to have been the case here.

I remember there was a lot of fuss several years ago at my old high school because administrators determined that a number of students were lying about their residency in order to attend this particular school. So they did a huge enrollment purge where they insisted that the students had to prove that they lived where they said they lived, or else they were kicked out. But I don't believe anybody was denied an education, period -- most of the students who ended up leaving just went back to other high schools in the district.

Also -- It's not unheard of for Korean parents to send their children over to America to stay with relatives or family friends, solely so that their kids can get an American education. I have yet to hear of school districts kicking up a fuss over this. I bet that they'll be avoiding Montgomery County schools from now on, though.

(Reply to this)(Thread)


[info]amadi
2009-07-02 05:00 pm UTC (link)
The thing that's so incredible here is that they were never denying that he was living in the district. They were simply denying him education because they were dissatisfied with the details of his personal situation, which really aren't the business of Montgomery County Schools. Nor, for that matter, is the kid's citizenship. He's a legal resident of the county, duly placed in the lawful custody of a resident of the county. End of story.

Also, this is DC, where there are a lot of kids who are, for one reason or another, living with a guardian while their parents are overseas. And that's what bothers me. If this kid's parents were U.S. gov't employees from California who were stationed in Bangkok, took their kid there, found that he couldn't quite fit in, and sent him back to their only trustworthy person in the U.S. who happened to be in Montgomery County, I somehow don't think that he would've come under this scrutiny. That his parents are, apparently, Thai nationals, seems to have been held against him.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)


[info]isaiddietpepsi
2009-07-02 05:32 pm UTC (link)
The thing that's so incredible here is that they were never denying that he was living in the district. They were simply denying him education because they were dissatisfied with the details of his personal situation, which really aren't the business of Montgomery County Schools. Nor, for that matter, is the kid's citizenship. He's a legal resident of the county, duly placed in the lawful custody of a resident of the county. End of story.

Yeah, that's the part that has me rolling my eyes too. I mean, I understood when my school decided to do its enrollment purge. They wanted to make sure that only residents were students. Fair enough. But this kid is a resident. That should be the only thing that matters. Even if Montgomery County somehow has mind readers in its midst that allows them to accurately deduce the reason why this kid moved back from Thailand, who cares? What does it matter what his motivation is?

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)


[info]amadi
2009-07-02 10:57 pm UTC (link)
That's the part that bugs me. If you live in a school district legally, you get to go to school there. Even if you moved just for the schools, you get to go to school there. People buy homes or lease apartments in specific school districts all the time.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)


[info]kijikun
2009-07-03 06:58 am UTC (link)
*nods* Because if they really want to use that argument -- then by using the same logic, hey I shouldn't be paying taxes for school because I don't have children. Only I'm not an asshole, and want children living in my district to have a good education.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)


[info]amadi
2009-07-03 07:14 am UTC (link)
The implications of this little work of art range pretty deeply, but my guess is that if there's a history of Montgomery County doing anything similar recently, a nice civil rights lawsuit could be the next thing we hear about. I hope someone's looking into it.

(Reply to this)(Parent)


[info]evilsqueakers
2009-07-03 08:32 pm UTC (link)
I moved between my mom and dad's during high school, depending on who wasn't currently using the pole up their ass, and I should have changed schools between them. I mean, I didn't have to change counties, which is good, but technically I was going between two larger schools in Gwinnett. Thankfully, my stepdad would just get up early and take me to school, or at my dad's I'd catch the bus. It was a clusterfuck but I wasn't going to Central Gwinnett and no one could make me. If I had to, I would have moved in with a closer family member. I have enough to populate one of the smaller states when you add two of my three trees. South had the better education and funding. I knew I was getting a better education and going to take advantage of it.

It's not the same thing but I can understand wanting to move around to get to a better school. I had no desire to go to a school were workers actually hit kids with hammers in the head all the time.

(Reply to this)(Parent)


[info]ahiru
2009-07-02 02:58 pm UTC (link)
But school officials concluded that he had come to Montgomery for free schools.

How nefarious! How dare a teenage legal US resident expect free public schooling. That's just diabolical. (And after the first year or so, didn't it occur to the school officials that maybe, just maybe, the kid actually wanted to just go to school because that's where he lived?)

(Reply to this)


[info]nostariel
2009-07-02 09:28 pm UTC (link)
Two fucking years?! Oh no, no racism there at all. >:[

Gah, I hate the way the American school system is set up and funded. Classism: UR DOIN IT RITE.

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[info]brennalarose
2009-07-04 03:21 am UTC (link)
Goddamnit, Hometown, stop SUCKING already!

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[info]tachikoma01
2009-07-07 02:15 am UTC (link)
I'm sadly reminded of school politics where I grew up. They built a shiny new high school in the middle of a new housing development, where you pretty much had to be a doctor or high ranking business professional to afford to live there.

If you looked at the lines for who could go there, they basically made a big loop around the one minority community that was there before the pricey housing went in. Like, you could look at the lines and actually see where it jutted out to go around and then came back in.

I noticed it a lot more than most people did, because I used to ride the same bus as this community and lived within reasonable walking/biking distance of it, and had always been on the same bus route. When the new school opened, the fact that they had to send a separate bus all the way out just for that one neighborhood... kinda was not subtle.

(Reply to this)

  
   
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