Residency Investigations Hot Topic with Pleasantdale School Board Again

The agenda for Wednesday’s Board of Education meeting at the district’s administrative center called for 10 minutes of discussion on residency protocols.

It took a lot longer than that. Once again the board

Board President Leandra Sedlack and Superintendent Dr. Mark Fredisdorf were content to leave investigating reports of non-resident students attending classes in the district in the hands of district administrators to deal with as they felt appropriate. But board members Karen O’Halloran and Mark Mirabile clearly were not.

“I’m uncomfortable with us pulling kids out of school without the board knowing about it,” O’Halloran said. “In my two years here on the board, we’ve twice taken kids out of school or not allowed children access to a public education and we found out about it after the fact. It happened with the H1N1; it happened with the residency.”

She said the board should know what protocols the administration is following when it receives an allegation that a student is not living in the district.

“I had suggested a house visit,” she said. “In the city of Chicago, they’re doing house visits.”

Sedlack said she didn’t see the issue in the same way. She said the board had delegated the responsibility for investigating residency issues to the administration, with no expectation that the board would be informed of the process.

“I feel what you want to do is create policy where there is no policy,” she said.

“Let’s make a procedure,” O’Halloran said. “Obviously, there is none.”

“I’m OK with delegating the responsibility to the administration,” Sedlack said. “I am comfortable with that.”

Tying hands of administrators?

Sedlack suggested that O’Halloran wanted to limit the flexibility of administrators to handle the investigations in the manner they felt appropriate, based on their experience in such matters.

“I don’t think we should leave it to chance,” O’Halloran said.

After clarifying O’Halloran’s position, Mirabile said he agreed with it.

“We just want to know that certain procedures were followed, and if one of them was skipped, why,” he said, “because we’re going to find out eventually. It’s going to come up in a closed session.”

“We need to have a process in place,” O’Halloran said. “I don’t think that it was right to spend $15,000 on a residency case just to show that we take residency seriously.”

Sedlack said Fredisdorf had checked with other superintendents and none had a written policy or procedure on residency investigations.

“You’re asking for something that doesn’t exist,” she said.

“It doesn’t really matter what any other district does,” Mirabile said. “We’re concerned with 107.”

How hard is developing a procedure?

Mirabile suggested it should be a relatively easy task for Fredisdorf to write down the procedure he has used in the past in investigating residency questions.

“It is not easy,” Fredisdorf responded. “Almost every one is different and almost every one involves someone who is lying to you.”

“Because you’ve done it so many times, it really should be simple,” Mirabile countered. “That’s all we’re asking for you to do tonight is for you to document them.”

“I don’t understand what you’re asking for,” Fredisdorf said.

“I’ll send you a note tomorrow,” Mirabile said.

Fredisdorf said he does document the steps he takes in each case. He said the district gets legal advice on every residency dispute and the board president is informed every step of the way.

Trying to illustrate how simple he felt it should be to list procedures, Mirabile quickly wrote down his own example of possible steps to follow.

“The first thing I’d do is go check the registration papers,” he said. “The second thing I’d do is call the house. The third thing I’d do is visit the house. Then I might do a repeat call or a repeat visit. Then I’d notify an attorney, notify the [board] president, and then hire an investigator. I’m sure I’m missing some steps.”

“There’s no guarantee that whatever steps you come up with in a given situation will be followed,” Fredisdorf said.

He said establishing a “lock-step procedure” to follow in all situations wasn’t realistic.

Mirabile and O’Halloran agreed that the same exact steps might not be followed in every situation, suggesting all that would be required of the administration was a simple explanation of the reason for skipping any steps.

Black and white or gray?

“I want a consistent policy, so it doesn’t look like a witch hunt,” O’Halloran said. “It should be black-and-white.”

“We have very consistent paperwork,” Fredisdorf said. “Where investigative procedures come in is when somebody has advanced this information … but we get information that something is fraudulent. Once you start dealing with that, it’s very hard to script, because each one is very, very different.”

He implied that developing a “laundry list” of procedures to follow would, therefore, be pointless.

“We strive for fairness all the time,” he added. “The problem is people will lie and they will do a lot of things to cover up their lies.”

Sedlack noted that legal counsel had advised the board it should not be involved in the process of investigating residency cases.

“I don’t want to be involved in the process,” O’Halloran said. “I want to know the process.”

“What’s the pleasure of the board because I’m really confused,” Fredisdorf finally asked.

The board eventually came to a consensus that it wanted Fredisdorf to list the steps that were being followed in the event a residency investigation occurred.