Every year, hundreds of kids are kicked out of suburban Philadelphia school districts for residency fraud. Maybe even thousands. This little-discussed corner of the K-12 world contains so many of the issues that shape education in Pennsylvania today.

WHYY explored the topic of disenrollment in our series, “Kicked Out.” This is part one. In part two, we’ll look at what school districts do when they suspect students of residency fraud.

To listen to the radio versions of this story, click on the play button below the headline to hear part one. To listen to part two, click the play button further down in the story.

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On Sept. 11, 2014, a resident of the Pottsgrove School District sent school administrators a letter demanding action.

She believed one of the neighbors in her sleepy suburban subdivision was running a scam, allowing extended family to stay at the address on school nights so they could illegally attend local public schools. Children would show up at the house early on weekday mornings or late Sunday night and disappear again Friday afternoon, the neighbor claimed.

She and others had been complaining about the house on Butternut Drive for years, saying the family was “using our school district and tax dollars.”

“We all would like to see something done, we have gone to the township, called the police, contacted the district office many times,” the neighbor wrote.

This is how many school residency investigations begin — with a tip.

Maybe some unsuspecting third-grader tells teachers she lives two towns over. Perhaps a neighbor reports strange pickup patterns at the house next door.

The tip travels up the chain to a suburban school administrator, who then requests a formal investigation. If the investigators find the student in question doesn’t live within district boundaries, the district moves to disenroll him or her.

Translation: The district kicks the kid of out school.

This type of thing happens hundreds of times each year in the four collar counties outside Philadelphia — maybe even thousands. Almost every suburban school district spends time and resources trying to root out families it suspects of lying about their addresses and illegally crossing district lines.

Some worry, however, that this form of educational law and order leaves poor and minority students vulnerable. That’s partially because disenrollment receives relatively little scrutiny from education policymakers, officials, and advocates. But peek inside the world of residency enforcement, and you will find many of the forces that shape education in Pennsylvania: race, class, school funding, inequity, and changing demographics.

WHYY dug into the numbers to look at the scope and nature of disenrollment. Some of the findings were frustratingly incomplete. Others were stark, suggesting minority families are more likely to be suspected of residency fraud and ultimately barred from many suburban schools because of it.

Though districts are not required to track the number of kids they remove from school, through a series of Right-to-Know requests, WHYY found 37 of 63 suburban districts recorded the number of disenrollments from 2014 to 2017. Those 37 districts disenrolled a combined 1,603 students.

To do that, districts paid social workers, hired investigators, tailed students, ran data searches, and monitored bounced mail — all in the service of determining who belonged in their schools — and who didn’t.

Fairness and money

Most school administrators will tell you that disenrolling students is about fairness and money.

“We are not the big bad bully standing there with the bat batting people away,” said Frank Bruno, director of pupil services for Delaware County’s William Penn School District.

William Penn, a largely poor district just west of Philadelphia, has long struggled to fund its schools — so much so that it’s currently suing the state to unlock more dollars. Though William Penn’s schools perform worse than many in nearby districts, they compare favorably to many in the School District of Philadelphia, right next door. That simple fact, said Bruno, creates an incentive for people to lie and puts strain on an already overburdened school system.

Even wealthier districts in Southeastern Pennsylvania feel pinched by rising enrollments and pension costs. Forced to impose regular tax hikes to keep up with expenses, districts are under financial and community pressure to ensure they’re only serving taxpaying residents.

“The idea of money comes into play, and it does something to people,” said Lee Ann Wentzel, superintendent of the Ridley School District in Delaware County. “It makes people feel something.”

The four major counties surrounding Philadelphia are carved into 63 school districts: some rich, some poor, some high-achieving, and some not. Research shows the wealth disparity among school districts in Pennsylvania is abnormally high. Combine those two facts, and you have ideal conditions for residency fraud. In many places, trekking from a struggling school district to a flourishing one requires little more than a 10-minute drive.

Some believe the suburbs of Southeastern Pennsylvania are uniquely predisposed to residency fraud and, thus, residency enforcement.

“Kicking a kid out of your school because they live in another community is a little bit localized in some respects,” said Dan McGarry, assistant superintendent with the Upper Darby School District in Delaware County. “It’s a big deal around here. Nationally, they say why would you want to keep a kid out?”

The disparities among school districts, in Pennsylvania and elsewhere, have deep roots in the policies of the past: housing segregation, job discrimination, and even Jim Crow, said Cornell University professor Noliwe Rooks, who recently wrote a book on school segregation. Her book includes a chapter on residency enforcement because she sees the issue as a “symptom of a larger problem.”

“You just want your kids to be safe and have basic education,” she said of parents who attempt to jump district lines. “I think [that] is more an indictment on the rest of us than it is those parents.”

Some administrators sympathize with that point — or at least the parents who commit residency fraud.

“I think when you look at it, people think they’re trying to get their kid a great education,” said McGarry. “That’s why it’s such a tough process.”

Four districts in Delaware County — William Penn, Chichester, Interboro, and Southeast Delco — each disenrolled more than 100 students.

William Penn was an outlier, disenrolling 495 students between 2014 and 2017, according to records the district provided to WHYY. Administrators estimated that in that same time period, they questioned the enrollment status of about 3,000 students. William Penn serves about 5,400 students overall.

But those numbers may not tell the whole story. Because there’s no formalized process for reporting student removals, several districts said they only count a fraction of students kicked out because of residency. Many families, administrators said, withdraw when confronted with evidence of residency fraud, rather than wait for a formal disenrollment.

“We say, ‘Hey, look, withdraw your student and register them in a different school district,’ ” said McGarry. “A withdrawal is different than disenrollment.”

Though McGarry doesn’t believe “there’s a staggering number of illegal residents attending our school district,” he admits administrators face pressure from community members who believe outsiders have flooded neighborhood schools and made them worse.

He put it delicately.

“When some communities change, when poverty increases in some communities and student conduct changes here and there, it leads people to be frustrated,” McGarry said.