By Ben Velderman
EAGnews.org

PHILADELPHIA – It’s a moral crime when government forces children from low-income families to attend sub-par, dangerous schools.

So it should never be a criminal offense when desperate parents ignore residency laws to “steal” a decent education for their children.

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But sadly, that remains the case.

Over the past several years, a handful of parents across the nation have been arrested for lying about where they live in order to send their children to a good school, instead of the failing and frequently dangerous schools the kids are required to attend by law.

Critics call it “zip code education” and say it unfairly condemns poor and minority children to an inferior education that leaves them wholly unprepared for adult life.

The latest example comes from Philadelphia, where Hamlet and Olesia Garcia were arrested in late August for allegedly stealing $11,000 in educational services from Pennsylvania’s Lower Moreland  Township School District.

District officials allege the Garcias falsely claimed to live with Olesia’s father, a Lower Moreland Township resident, in order to send their five-year-old daughter to Pine Road Elementary School.

Officials received a tip last March that the couple was not living in Lower Moreland. The district’s residency investigator conducted a stakeout in April and determined that the child never left her grandfather’s home in the morning to attend school, reports the Lower Moreland Patch.

“However, the vehicle driven by Hamlet Garcia that took the student to school was seen earlier in the morning at the Garcia’s home” in Philadelphia, the Patch reports. A subsequent police investigation determined that at no time did any of the Garcias reside in Lower Moreland.

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“These defendants essentially stole from every hard-working taxpayer who resides within the Lower Moreland School District by lying about the true location of their home,” said Montgomery County District Attorney Risa Vetri Ferman in a statement.

The Garcias, who are free on bail, say Olesia and their daughter moved in with Olesia’s father after the couple began experiencing marriage problems in the summer of 2011. That arrangement lasted until March 2012, when they moved back to Philadelphia.

“In April, (school officials) contacted my wife and me asking why we didn’t report she moved out,” Hamlet Garcia told 6abc.com. “We say we are going to tell you, but we didn’t know it was a problem.”

The Garcias offered to reimburse the district for the final four months of the school year, but say Lower Moreland officials refused their offer.

It will be left up to a judge to determine who’s telling the truth.

But here’s what is known with certainty: The Garcias live in Philadelphia, home to one of America’s very worst performing school systems, where only 14 out of every 100 students can read at or above grade level.

Ironically, the Garcias only live a mile or so away from Lower Moreland Township, home to one of Pennsylvania’s finest school systems, where 89 out of every 100 students can read at or above grade level.

The Garcias’ situation illustrates the plight of so many American families whose children are denied access to a good education because they live on the wrong side of a school district’s boundary lines. Such scenarios seem antithetical in this land of opportunity, where all people are said to be created equal.

List of “offenders” keeps growing

The Garcia case is fifth high-profile incident in which parents have been arrested for stealing education services. Here is a list of the other recent known cases, from earliest to most recent:

Yolanda Miranda of New York was arrested in 2009 for falsifying school enrollment forms that allowed her children to attend a suburban school district instead of the perennially awful Rochester City School District. Her charges were later reduced to a misdemeanor, reports TheDaily.com.

“If I had to do it again 10 times over, I would,” Miranda recently told the news site.

Marie Menard of Connecticut was arrested in October 2010 for illegally enrolling her grandsons in the Stratford school district. Menard has until next February to pay the remaining $10,000 of her $30,000 fine. If Menard fails to pay it off in time, she will be charged with a felony, Samuel tells EAGnews.

Kelley Williams-Bolar of Ohio was jailed in January 2011 for falsifying residency records that allowed her children to attend the Copley-Fairlawn district. Her actions earned her a felony conviction, ending Williams-Bolar’s dream of becoming a teacher, reports Philly.com.

Tanya McDowell of Connecticut was arrested in April 2011 for illegally sending her then-five-year-old son to a nearby school district. At the time of McDowell’s arrest, the Connecticut Post wrote that it was “the first time anyone can remember a parent being criminally prosecuted for sending a child to a school out of district.”

The case took a tragic turn when McDowell was arrested a few weeks later for selling narcotics. She is currently serving a five-year prison term for selling drugs, which is running concurrently with her five-year term for stealing education, the Post reported in March.

‘An awakening among parents’

Gwen Samuel, founder and president of the Connecticut Parents Union, has spent years fighting against school residency laws that she says are unjust. (As of 2011, six states and the District of Columbia had specific laws addressing school residency violators).

Samuel expects more arrests over residency violations, not only because cash-starved school districts are cracking down on violators in order to save money, but because parents are becoming increasingly desperate to get their children out of failing and dangerous school environments.

“I tell parents, you are your child’s parent trigger,” Samuel tells EAGnews.org.

She says there’s “an awakening among parents” that it’s their duty to look out for the best interests of their children, because too many members of the education establishment don’t really care. She cites the recent Chicago teachers strike as Exhibit A.

Samuel expects the parental “awakening” will grow when the pro-school reform movie “Won’t Back Down” hits theaters across the nation later this week.

Actually, the tide of public opinion may already be turning against criminalizing scared and desperate parents.

A Philly.com editorial argues that the Garcia case, and others like it from across the country, “cry out for a voucher system that would allow middle-class and poorer parents to escape substandard public schools and use their tax dollars to get the best education for their kids.”

The American Federation for Children, a school choice advocacy group, just released a new report that “cites 15 different polls in recent years that demonstrate strong support for school choice, specifically voucher programs and scholarship tax credit programs.”

“There is great momentum for school choice because Democratic and Republican policymakers around the country are recognizing what parents already know—that all options should be on the table to give kids, who are trapped in perpetually underperforming schools, an immediate path to a quality education,” said Kevin Chavous, senior advisor to the American Federation for Children.