CV makes parents prove they live inside district

Parents of some Central Valley School District students are failing an important take-home exam this fall that could determine which schools their children attend.

For the first time, the district is asking parents of students in every school to verify that they live in the district and within the attendance areas of their schools. Some schools are finding that parents are lying about their homes, putting down addresses that lead to vacant lots and businesses along Sprague Avenue.

Bowdish Middle School Principal Dave Bouge saw one form in which a parent claimed to have children living at a familiar address: It was the home of one of Bouge’s relatives.

“I’d be happy to take the kids, I could if we had space,” Bouge said. “But we’re getting so full that it’s becoming scary. We’ve got to get more investigative and more blunt in saying, ‘Sorry ma’am, I know you don’t live here.’ “

As district enrollment continues to climb by more than 350 a year, school officials are being forced to bus students away from their neighborhood schools and instead to more distant buildings with more room.

Last spring, the district discovered parents were enrolling their children into some of CV’s more crowded schools, leaving their normal attendance boundaries inside and outside the district, said spokeswoman Melanie Rose.

As schools became more packed, district officials decided to require all parents to prove their children lived within each school’s attendance area, she said. This fall, parents will fill out a form and provide a current utility bill to prove that they and their children live in the right spots. If they’re out of bounds and the school is too crowded, the children could be moved out of the schools.

People have tried to use downloaded and forged lease agreements, and have attempted to show the child living with distant family members or friends in the district, Bouge said.

The deception isn’t fair to students who are forced to ride buses away from their own schools, he said.

“The day that I turn out a child that lives in my attendance area because another one snuck in illegally, I’ve done a disservice to the child who lives in my attendance area,” he said.

Classes at Principal Eileen Utecht’s Broadway Elementary are also filled to the brim, and 20 students are being bused to neighboring schools.

Last Friday, seven schools were sending 76 students from their neighborhood schools to different schools because of overcrowding, Rose said.

Utecht did most of her address verifying in the summer and said it wasn’t easy to tell parents that they had to switch schools.

“I had to ask some students to leave this building and they’ve been here for three or four years,” she said. “That’s difficult. They have friends here and the parents are people who participate and have supported our building for three years.”

Most parents at Utecht’s school haven’t been angry, but certainly disappointed, she said.

“They don’t like it, I don’t like it, but that’s where we’re at as far as our building capacities at the moment,” Utecht said.

Capacities are stretched thin at many of the district’s elementary and middle schools. Principals from those schools gathered at a recent Board of Directors meeting to reveal that most have no available rooms.

District officials are running a $75.76 million bond this November to help construct two new schools at the east end of the district and make improvements to nine other schools. The bond comes on the heels of a failed $55.2 million bond in March.

Students in north Spokane County’s Mead School District have faced similar requirements for four years, said Cal Johnson, executive director of student services and activities for Mead.

“We’ve seen outright untruthfulness ranging from using relatives’ addresses to trying to use post office boxes in Mead,” Johnson said.

Johnson said he estimates the district kicked out about 200 non-district children in the last four years.

Each Central Valley school is handling the attendance area forms on its own and coming up with ways to get numbers down. Bouge said he’ll be looking to make changes as early as next month.

“There will come a time around the first of October where I’m going to have to bounce out kids not in our attendance area,” Bouge said.