Flossmoor School District 161 really wants to get its residency issues resolved, but the school board decided another $50,000 in expenses for additional surveillance isn’t the answer.

At the Feb. 23 board meeting, Superintendent Dana Smith gave the board a report on how the district has been dealing with allegations of students being in District 161 schools without legally living in the district.  This has been an ongoing issue and the board asked Smith to investigate other ways to tackle the problem.

Board President David Linnear said he’s heard from community members who believe non-residency is a question of “stealing” from District 161, but he said the question before the board is could that $50,000 for residency searches be better spent for students already in the district.

“You do want to maximize the time and money you spend on kids,” Smith said. “I would say, given the sheer number of hours on this topic … I don’t think it’d be smart to spend another $50,000.”

Member Christina Vlietstra said it’s a question of what the taxpayers expect. She believes they want the board to do something, but she admitted “I struggle with the price tag.”

“Obviously, we want people to follow the rules and work collaboratively,” member Theartis Childress III said. “We want to go after (the non-residents),” but he said “that price tag is a whole lot more than I’m comfortable with. That’s money would we be taking away from children.” 

Smith said the district has been making great strides by checking residency both at registration time and through the use of Chicagoland Private Investigations, a firm the district has on a $50,000 annual contract to find and weed out students who don’t legally reside in District 161 boundaries — that includes Flossmoor and sections of Chicago Heights, Homewood and Hazel Crest.

Smith said he was not aware of any other district spending the amount of money District 161 is spending on residency issues. He pointed out that it goes beyond the investigation. The district is paying for hearing officers and attorneys. The district also attempts to collect tuition costs for the education the non-resident student has received.

“The challenge is you need video and photo evidence over multiple weeks and multiple times of the week,” he explained. “I would say districts that touch us, they have (a few) investigators (working for the district) and we could have 10 (private investigators) on the street.”

Smith told board members that both District 161 and Homewood District 153 are now coordinating residency efforts with Homewood-Flossmoor High School District 233. Sometimes a residency alert may be caught by a grade school but not for an older sibling at H-F, and vice versa, Smith said. Better coordination can help all districts.

The superintendent said residency is also being checked for third and sixth graders, no matter how long the student has been in the district. 

Chicago Private Investigations has already handled 11 investigations. Three led to hearings. This year 13 students unenrolled. It has 10 ongoing investigations.

Smith said, “If you want to be more aggressive” then the board can hire a second firm. National Investigations will broaden the scope of the current investigations, but it will cost an additional $50,000. 

District 161 does everything it can to push back and verify, but Smith said in extreme cases there are families that will give up the student’s guardianship to keep the child in the district. He knows the board hopes that families who learn of the investigations will change their minds about falsely enrolling, but that hasn’t happened.

Despite all attempts by the district, there are families that “beat the process” with counterfeit documents and “the amount of fraud is astronomical,” Smith said.

The board members decided to continue with the residency process as is.

Linnear said residency has been an ongoing issue that the board has been studying for some time, “and I’m really proud that we took it on looking at the process and asking those questions.”