The Park Ridge-Niles District 64 Board of Education voted to conduct residency checks for all district families in the run-up to the 2015-2016 school year.
While the resolution adopted at the Feb. 9 meeting states that the checks will be annual, the board members agreed that the first residency check would be a trial. If the check shows that the number of families that don’t live in the district isn’t significant enough to justify the expense involved, the board would repeal it.
The board considered two options for annual residency checks. But when it cast the vote, it declined to choose a particular option, leaving the details up to the district administration.
The board has been discussing residency checks for the past few months. While families that live in rented housing have their residency checked annually, families that live in housing they own only get checked when their children first enter the district. The board and the district administration have been concerned that this allowed home-owning families to keep sending their children to the district even after they move out of the district. Since such families don’t pay property taxes in their district, educating their kids puts a strain on district resources.
During Jan. 26 board meeting, District Superintendent Laurie Heinz presented three options for more regular residency checks. Under Option A, the families would be checked once every three years. Under Option B, families would be checked every year, and families would be required to bring in documents to prove their residency in person. Option C would also create annual checks, but families would be able to simply drop documents off.
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At that meeting, board members John Heyde and Scott Zimmerman expressed concerns about all of the options. Heyde maintained his long-standing argument that more frequent checks would be too burdensome for residents, while Zimmerman argued that, unless the residency checks are more thorough, increasing their frequency would be pointless.
In response, Heinz offered what she described as a compromise. During the Feb. 9 meeting, she said that she and the district staff believed that Option A would be thorough enough to cover half of the district families. It would give the district a decent idea as to how many non-residents the district schools had without placing too much burden on families.
But as the board proceeded to discuss the issue, most board members rejected that option. Board member Bob Johnson argued that the district needs to determine the full extent of the problem, that checking half of the home-owning families wouldn’t cut it.
“I think the only way we can determine the efficiency of [residency checks] is to do it completely,” he said.
Board member Dan Collins, who previously said he would support whichever annual check gets the best results, agreed with Johnson’s argument. He noted that he had two kids in the district schools, and he was willing to deal with the burden. Collins also noted that none of the district parents he spoke to felt annual residency checks were burdensome.
“I had no one in the community come up and question if it was a bad idea,” he said. “They told me it was a great idea.”
Board member Dan Paterno also agreed with Johnson.
“We should at least do it once, and if we don’t catch anybody, we’d know it was a waste of time,” he said.
Board member Vicki Lee offered a similar sentiment.
Heyde said that, if the board were to adopt annual checks, he would favor Option C. He compared Option B to airport security that, in his opinion, didn’t actually make passengers safer.
“Its makes people feel like we’re tougher, and it’s questionable whether it does any good,” said Heyde
Zimmerman reiterated an earlier argument that, without more thorough residency checking process, increasing frequency was pointless.
Board president Tony Borrelli said that he was sympathetic to concerns that the process would be burdensome, but he also felt that the district should do the residency check at least once.
“We don’t know what we don’t know, and we have to find out, so that we at least have an estimate,” he said.
After some discussion, Collins proposed a resolution that mandated annual background checks. The language of the resolution didn’t specify whether the district would use Option B or Option C. District 64 Public Information Coordinator Bernadette Tramm subsequently confirmed to Pioneer Press that the board decided to leave the details up to the district administration.
The board approved the resolution 5-2, with Heyde and Zimmerman voting against.
Igor Studenkov is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.