California: Bill to limit how districts investigate school residency - ContraCostaTimes.com:
California: Bill to limit how districts investigate school residency
Assemblywoman Susan Bonilla, D-Concord, has crafted legislation that would place parameters on investigations into school district residency. (Jose Carlos Fajardo/Bay Area News Group)
On April 2, a Berkeley Unified School District employee knocked on the door of Kim Zvik's Kensington home as part of an unannounced home visit to determine whether Zvik's son lived within the district's high school boundaries.
Her younger 11-year-old son answered the door. The employee asked if the boy's parents were home, and when he said he was alone, she asked whether his brother and parents lived in the house.
Welcome to the squishy world of school residency investigations where kids often find themselves in the cross hairs of investigators' clandestine inspections, interviews, and sometimes their camera lenses.
After reading this newspaper's report last year on an Orinda girl's struggles with her elementary school district and the private investigator who lied to the girl's mother about his residency probe, Assemblywoman Susan Bonilla, D-Concord, has now crafted legislation that would place parameters on those investigations.
Assembly Bill 1101 does not specifically prohibit investigators from posing questions to children, as occurred with the Zvik family, but it does require school boards to adopt a policy for residency investigations. The bill, which will be heard Wednesday in the Assembly Education Committee for the first time, also requires:
Investigators to identify themselves truthfully to those interviewed during an investigation.
Five days' written notice to families before an investigation starts.
Districts to describe investigation methods and provide information about the query to guardians if asked.
No "surreptitious photographing" of targeted children.
An appeal process.
"Specific" facts supporting the launch of a residency investigation.
"I as a parent and grandmother would be very upset if I felt that was happening with my children or grandchildren," Bonilla said in a phone interview. "This shouldn't be done under secrecy. ... In this day and age, we really should expect from our school districts a higher degree of transparency."
Bonilla created AB 1101 after reading in this newspaper about Vivian, a 7-year-old girl who lived in Orinda with her mother, a live-in nanny. The girl was told she would have to disenroll from her Orinda elementary school after the district hired a private investigator who disguised his true identity to her mother, claiming he was an insurance adjuster investigating a fictitious accident involving the mother's car.
Further reporting by the paper also found many districts hire investigators who secretly photograph children coming and going from their houses, with some districts claiming they need such evidence to prove someone lives inside or outside their district.
"There's probably an equal number of school districts that don't use these tactics and they get very good results ... and the process is not violating privacy rights," Bonilla said, citing Pleasanton and Fremont districts as having clear policies.
As for the Berkeley case, the school district said it's constantly combating Kensington parents who want their children to attend Berkeley schools when they are supposed to attend West Contra Costa district schools. Berkeley Unified spokesman Mark Coplan cited an example of a parent California: Bill to limit how districts investigate school residency - ContraCostaTimes.com:
