Harries Plans School-Choice Fraud Probe

Shirin Bahmanyar’s daughter is tenth on the wait list for Worthington Hooker School’s kindergarten class, which had more East Rock families apply this year than ever before.

She believes her daughter could be higher on the list — because not all the families who reported living in the Hooker district actually do.

Bahmanyar’s daughter is one of 72 students applying to Hooker in the school choice process for next year able to show proof of residency in the neighborhood, gaining them a ​“preference” in the process.

She and a couple of other parents approached the Board of Education this spring to report that some families were submitting fake leases or utility bills that fraudulently place them in East Rock, inflating the number of applicants banging down the door of the popular neighborhood school.

Rumors have been floating for years that people were gaming the school choice system to get into Hooker School, said Jeff Ostergren. His child got into kindergarten at East Rock Magnet School in the fall, their second choice, and is waitlisted at Hooker, their first choice.

Three types of preference exist in the school choice process. The strongest comes from living in the neighborhood of a particular school and having a sibling already there, followed by just neighborhood preference, and lastly just sibling preference.

Sherri Davis-Googe, director of choice and enrollment, said the concerns were raised this year because the total number of Hooker applicants who had any neighborhood preference had increased. Of those who put Hooker as their first choice for kindergarten, 72 had both neighborhood and sibling preference or just neighborhood preference, up from 62 the previous two years. The total number of kindergarten applicants who put Hooker as their first choice also increased, at 114 from 94 in 2014 and 62 in 2013.

The total number of seats available has stayed steady at around 52.

Davis-Googe confirmed that the fraud has occurred at other schools. She said the school system has no evidence of actual fraud at Hooker. But because parents like Bahmmanyar have raised the concern, school district officials have decided to investigate the question and crack down on potential fraud.

Davis-Googe said she thinks the problem is that more families have moved into East Rock — and that it’s possible the school is ​“outgrowing” its neighborhood. A school choice and enrollment committee is working to redraw the lines across the district, to account for disparities in neighborhood sizes and boundaries.

Hooker is the only neighborhood school with many more neighborhood applicants than seats, she said. Davis Street 21st Century Magnet School also has many more neighborhood applicants, but since it is a magnet school, ​“the expectation is a little different.” Families expect that being in the neighborhood will definitely get them into a neighborhood school.

If parents are pretending to live in the neighborhood, it might be ​“keeping families and children that legitimately live in the neighborhood from being accepted to Hooker,” Bahmanyar said. In past years, most families with neighborhood preference got off the waitlist eventually. This year, the waitlist is so long, Bahmanyar is worried her daughter will not ​“have a first day of kindergarten at” Hooker or her second choice East Rock Magnet School.

Davis-Googe’s team placed Bahmanyar’s daughter in Strong School, now located on Orchard Street in the Hill neighborhood (and soon to be on Southern Connecticut State University’s campus). Bahmanyar is a pregnant working mother and Strong School is too far to be a reasonable option — so she turned it down, she said.

Now, she is on two waitlists and has no viable option for her daughter to start kindergarten in the fall.

The Board of Ed has convened a working group to crack down on potential fraud in the next few months, said Superintendent Garth Harries.

“We agree that families who are dishonest in the enrollment process should not benefit from their dishonesty. It would be a real concern and violation of trust,” Harries said. His team is considering being ​“more exacting” with the kinds of documents required to prove residency.

At an upcoming welcome event for Hooker families in June, Davis-Googe and her team will be reviewing the registration information of all families, to make sure it is current. If they find out that a parent committed any kind of fraud to get into the school, they will ​“work with the family to place them in a school with available seats” and/or at the bottom of Hooker’s waitlist.

Truancy officers will help with the process by doing home visits to families about whom suspicions have been raised, she said.

Harries and Davis-Googe have asked parents to help them by anonymously reporting if they hear of others committing school enrollment fraud.

But Ostergren and Bahmanyar said they would rather not do that. ​“We raised the issue. It’s best for the administration to solve that in a way they think is fair and logistically feasible,” Ostergren said.

“It should not be our role as concerned parents to point fingers at anyone or provide more information other than the fact that we are concerned,” Bahmanyar said. ​“We don’t want to be pointing fingers at specific people.”

Superintendent Harries said parents have a responsibility to the community to help solve the problem. ​“I don’t think it’s fair to complain about the problem but not be willing to help solve it. I appreciate that they don’t want to be accusers and be publicly named as accusers. I would want to respect that. At the same time, it doesn’t make sense to send truancy officers to every applicant to kindergarten,” he said. ​“It’s not a good use of resources, or a particularly welcoming and trusting thing to do with the vast majority of parents” who are not misrepresenting themselves.

Davis-Googe said she understands families’ concerns and does not want them to do ​“anything they’re uncomfortable with.” At the same time, there is little way her team can sniff out the fraud without help, especially if a family seems to have ​“valid residency information.”

“You can’t stalk a neighborhood,” she said.

Generally, parents find out about any kind of school choice fraud when their children are in the school. ​“If a little girl was in the classroom and said, ​‘Oh, I went to so-and-so’s birthday party and she didn’t live in our neighborhood.’ That’s the kind of stuff that happens. There’s not usually a whole tattling piece,” Davis-Googe said.

East Rock is a ​“transient area,” said the neighborhood Alder Anna Festa. ​“It’s hard to say who’s moving in and who’s moving out. At the same time, there are only so many apartments people can move into.”

Parents are the ​“best source” of information because they have kids who ​“go to preschool together and go to the park together. They know many 5- or 6‑year-old are in the district,” Festa said.

She stressed that she hasn’t seen any concrete evidence to prove that the problem is rampant, but that many constituents have approached her saying they’re aware of the issue. Festa said she doesn’t think the problem is unique to Hooker School or to East Rock.

“Personally, I think home visits need to be done across the board,” but that is a costly measure, she said.

Ostergren said he brought the problem to the Board of Ed to let them and parents who are engaging in school choice fraud know ​“how it affects other families.” He and Bahmanyar said they felt supported when they took problems to Davis-Googe and her team.

But Bahmanyar said the Board of Ed has to be more proactively transparent with parents about the enrollment process, making information easier to find from the start of the process instead of providing it when asked.

They plan to return to board meetings if they see the system hasn’t been repaired. ​“I’m going to keep up with it. I’m not going away,” Bahmanyar said.