On April 2, a Berkeley Unified School District employee knocked on the door of Kim Zvik’s Kensington home as part of an unannounced home visit to determine whether Zvik’s son lived within the district’s high school boundaries.

Her younger 11-year-old son answered the door. The employee asked if the boy’s parents were home, and when he said he was alone, she asked whether his brother and parents lived in the house.

Welcome to the squishy world of school residency investigations where kids often find themselves in the cross hairs of investigators’ clandestine inspections, interviews, and sometimes their camera lenses.

After reading this newspaper’s report last year on an Orinda girl’s struggles with her elementary school district and the private investigator who lied to the girl’s mother about his residency probe, Assemblywoman Susan Bonilla, D-Concord, has now crafted legislation that would place parameters on those investigations.

Assembly Bill 1101 does not specifically prohibit investigators from posing questions to children, as occurred with the Zvik family, but it does require school boards to adopt a policy for residency investigations. The bill, which will be heard Wednesday in the Assembly Education Committee for the first time, also requires:

Investigators to identify themselves truthfully to those interviewed during an investigation.

Five days’ written notice to families before an investigation starts.

Districts to describe investigation methods and provide information about the query to guardians if asked.

No “surreptitious photographing” of targeted children.

An appeal process.