How stealing a better education for your kids can land you in jail

If you live a few miles from Millburn, say, in Newark, N.J., you might go to Barringer High School, where just 52 percent of students graduate in four years and fewer than half the students are proficient in reading and math. Violence is routine. In October 2012, a student was stabbed to death in an after-school fight. Two years earlier, a student was sexually assaulted in an empty classroom.

“The way it works in New Jersey is you go to school within your ZIP code. It’s a ZIP code education system,” explained Laura Waters, president of the Lawrence Township School Board in Mercer County and author of the blog NJ Left Behind. “And the reason those kids go to Barringer is because that’s where their parents can afford to live.”

The state has charter schools and an interdistrict transfer program for fewer than 3 percent of students. But by and large in New Jersey, address is destiny. So some parents, desperate to improve their children’s opportunities, lie about their address, sneak past the border and steal a better education for their kids. 

Adam Fried, superintendent of the affluent Harrington Park School District in Bergen County, N.J., says he feels conflicted about hunting down border hoppers and kicking them out. But he says his ultimate responsibility is to the taxpayers in the community who fund his budget.

The issue isn’t funding, exactly. New Jersey is one of 17 states that spend more money per student in high-poverty districts than in low-poverty ones, according to a 2012 report from the Education Law Center. Millburn Township spends $17,392 a year on each student, reports to the New Jersey Department of Education. Newark spends $21,700. The difference is where that money comes from.

The cost of Millburn students is almost entirely — 86 percent — paid by the community’s property taxes. In Newark, just 11 percent of funding comes from local taxes, with the rest paid for by the government. That means high-performing districts like Millburn want to protect their borders. If there were just 10 out-of-district children per grade at Millburn High School, the extra cost to the Millburn taxpayers would be almost $600,000 a year.

“They are personally funding the schools,” Waters said. “It all comes on the backs of those taxpayers. So if you say, ‘Well, there’s a kid from Newark trying to sneak in,’ we’re not going to pay for that kid. He doesn’t live here.”

More and more, high-performing school districts are cracking down on boundary hoppers and hiring a kind of suburban border patrol — private detectives equipped with high-tech tools — to sniff out education thieves.

Jimmie Mesis, a New Jersey–based private investigator for 33 years, has made big business out of the work. Five years ago, he started his specialized investigation company, Verify Residence, and school districts are some of his biggest clients.

It all started when he developed a data-mining program that could take a school’s entire student roster and, usually within 72 hours, check whether the address a parent had given matched up with other records.

When schools saw the results, Mesis said, they realized they had a big problem.

“We’ll run the student names through the database, and it might often come back as totally out of district, out of town, out of state,” he explained. “In New Jersey, we’ve had a lot of cases where the students actually lived in Pennsylvania or New York City and they were coming to school in New Jersey.”

From a van tricked out with a secret periscope and wall-to-wall monitors, Mesis and his partner Jim Nanos have tracked hundreds of students.

“Basically, the surveillance involves us sitting outside the out-of-district residence and videotaping the child coming out of that house to prove that the child slept in a residence that was out of the district,” he said. “We're probably talking about 30 seconds of video. That’s all it is.”

Although the company will sometimes use an SUV or a regular car, the surveillance van has a computer to type reports, a monitor, a microwave, an air conditioning unit, a printer and fax machine and the ability to stream live video to a remote location — costly equipment.

So, how big is business?

“It’s taken off,” Mesis boasted, crediting technological advances in surveillance. “It’s a market that didn't exist more than three, four years ago to the extent that it is now.”

And that market can be lucrative. Mesis said schools can pay anywhere from $3,000 to $20,000, depending on the size of the school and the services requested. In a given year, Verify Residence may have more than 60 school clients, he added.

But to some who have been the subject of his surveillance, Mesis’ work is downright creepy.

“We’ve had incidences where parents, when they’re caught, they'll say, ‘I can't believe that you were watching me,’” he said. He added that his team abides by privacy laws, which vary by state.

Though policing these boundaries is fiscally smart and legally sound, there are hazier ethics at play. The criminals, after all, are parents who want the best for their children, parents who are saddened or afraid to send their kids to the schools in their own ZIP code. These offenders are also, according to crackdown critics, often minorities. 

Mesis denies that that has been his experience. “If I was to do a survey of all the students that we’ve ever caught, I would have to say that most of them were white and that they weren't black or any other race,” he said. “Sometimes the students that are doing this are from well-to-do families,” pointing out that some parents lie about their address so their children can play on a particular sports team or maintain their friends after a move.

“Basically, as an investigator, I try not to get involved in the personal aspect of why people are doing what they’re doing,” Mesis said. “Bottom line is, they’re breaking the law.” 

Kelley Williams-Bolar was arrested for stealing education for her two daughters after lying about her address to enroll them in a better school district.

In New Jersey the consequences of boundary-hopping include expulsion or back payment of the school district’s tuition. In at least seven states and Washington, D.C., boundary hoppers can be criminally charged for theft of educational services.

Williams-Bolar was complaining to her dad about her neighborhood in Akron, Ohio, when he suggested that she send her daughter to the school in ZIP code instead.

“He said, ‘Just send them to my school,’” she told America Tonight. “You know you’re here every day. You’re here all the time anyway.”

Williams-Bolar, 43, who has been a teacher’s aide for many years, was aware of many boundary-hopping kids. While she knew she was being deceptive when she registered with her dad’s address, she thought of it as more of a white lie.

“It wasn’t like it was Burger King’s address. This was my dad’s address. And we both lived off the same road,” she said. “It was just that he lived in the township and I lived in the city. But we literally lived five minutes away from each other.”

So instead of going to Akron schools, where the student body is largely low-income and black, Williams-Bolar’s two daughters went to a school in their grandfather’s district of Copley-Fairlawn, which is mostly white and funded primarily by property taxes.

“We had things that I never would even think an elementary school would have. We had a computer lab. We had the garden outside. We had our own greenhouse,” Jada, the younger daughter, told America Tonight. “And I was just so grateful to have been able to go there for just two years.”

As Williams-Bolar understands it, a private investigator hired by the school district monitored her comings and goings and assembled evidence that she was not a Copley resident. She withdrew her two daughters and enrolled them back in Akron.

“It was a huge difference. It was huge,” said Jada. “We didn’t learn that much. It was disruptive in classes. There were no resources. It was completely different, and I felt like I wasn’t learning anything at all.”

Eighteen months later, Williams-Bolar was indicted for grand theft and forgery. The judge said she wanted to send a message to others like her, and Williams-Bolar went to jail for nine days. During that time, her daughters lived with their grandfather in Copley.

The story generated national outrage. A petition to free her went viral, and Ohio Gov. John Kasich ultimately pardoned her. But for another family one state over, the trial is yet to come. 

“I was just in disbelief that this was happening in America over education, a 5-year-old child,” said Olesia Garcia. “And I pleaded with the superintendent. I said, ‘Look, we’re good parents. We’re good citizens. I’m a business owner. I never did anything. I always walked the straight line.’”

Cuban immigrant Hamlet Garcia married Olesia, a Ukrainian immigrant, in 1998. In 2011 they had marital problems, they say, and Olesia moved out of their Philadelphia home with their daughter, Fiorella, and into her father’s house in Montgomery County, Pa. There she enrolled Fiorella in Pine Road Elementary, a largely white and affluent school.

In March 2012, the Garcias say, they reconciled, and Olesia Garcia and Fiorella moved back to Philadelphia, and Fiorella finished the year at Pine Road. In April they were contacted by the school district, which disputed their residency. And in August, they say, they were told they had a choice: Turn themselves in or a warrant would be put out for their arrest.