Non-resident students removed from Valley Stream schools

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Fifty-four students were removed from Valley Stream schools this year for not residing within district boundaries, the Central High School District’s Residency Advisory Committee reported on June 17.

The committee — comprising Board of Education members from districts 13, 24 and the high school district — meets twice a year to monitor residency compliance in the districts. Between July 2018 and June 2019, it announced, 11 non-resident students were withdrawn from District 13, nine were withdrawn from District 24 and 34 were withdrawn from the high school district. That is a 22 percent increase since last year, when 42 non-resident students were removed from the schools.

To find these students, the Central High School District employs a residency officer, Newville Roberts, who processes all of the registration packets and receives tips from parents and teachers on the districts’ residency hotline about students who are suspected of attending the districts illegally. Those calls can be made anonymously.

This year, five people called the residency hotline, the committee reported, which resulted in three of the 54 non-resident students being removed from the school system.

But before a student is removed, Roberts must conduct home visits and background checks on the student in question, according to Clifford Odell, the Central High School District’s assistant superintendent for personnel and administration.

“If he can’t make a determination and we need surveillance, that’s when we go to an outside investigative firm,” Odell explained.

This year, he said, investigative firms conducted 29 of the districts’ 255 investigations, which cost the Central High School District $30,000. Districts 13 and 24 are billed for their participation throughout the year.

Those outside investigators search for a student’s address and watch the house for several months to determine whether the student is, in fact, living in the district. They then report their findings back to district officials, who sit down with the student’s family to discuss options, which might include leaving the school or contacting the district’s liaison for homeless students. Parents can appeal the committee’s findings to the state education commissioner, who would decide whether the student can remain at the school or must leave.

District 30 is not a member of the committee, however, and instead conducts its own investigations, which Superintendent Nicholas Stirling said are more cost-effective. The surveillance, he said, costs the district $41.50 per hour, but additional document searches tend to bring the cost up to about $50 an hour.

As of June 21, Stirling reported, eight families have been found to send their children to the schools without residing in the district, which resulted in 11 students being withdrawn. But, he added, District 30 is still in the midst of calculating how many non-resident students were removed in total this year, as several cases are still pending and district officials are preoccupied with the end of the school year.