GROSSE POINTE, MI - Grosse Pointe Public Schools is considering changing the enforcement of its residency policy, which currently includes an anonymous tip line that can lead to third-party investigations of whether students actually live in the district.

Student residency has long been a charged issue at Grosse Pointe Schools, which does not enroll Schools of Choice students who live outside the geographical boundaries of the district. Most Michigan schools have started accepting Schools of Choice students as a way to boost their funding, because state dollars follow the student.

Grosse Pointe Schools - which enrolled 7,947 students in the 2016-17 school year - has seen a 5 percent decrease in its enrollment over the past five years, according to data from the Michigan Center for Educational Performance and Information.

But the school district has maintained its policy of enrolling only resident students and its strict requirements for verifying student residency.

"This is a topic that comes up often, and there's community push on either side," said deputy superintendent Jon Dean at a board of education meeting on Monday, Sept. 11, where the trustees discussed the policy.

Grosse Pointe Schools sits to the northeast of the Detroit Public Schools Community District, and the boundary between the districts was named the most economically segregated in the country in a "Fault Lines" report published in 2016 by the nonprofit group EdBuild.

Three-quarters of the students at Grosse Pointe Schools are white and less than 14 percent of their student body comes from low-income families, according to state data.

The median annual income level for households in the school district is $90,542, according to the Fault Lines report, and Grosse Pointe students perform fairly well academically. About 41 percent of the district's third through eighth graders tested as proficient in all subjects on the M-STEP in 2016-17, and 60.2 percent of Grosse Pointe juniors met college readiness benchmarks on the SAT.

By comparison, less than 10 percent of Detroit public schools students tested as proficient in all subjects on the M-STEP, and 12.3 percent of Detroit students met college readiness benchmarks on the SAT.

Less than 2.5 percent of Detroit Public Schools' 45,720 students last school year were white and almost 78 percent were low-income. The median annual income level in the district is $26,087.

Information from the Fault Lines report shows the economic segregation between Grosse Pointe and Detroit.

The residency policy set by the Grosse Pointe school board simply says students must be Grosse Pointe residents to attend the public school district. Administrative guidelines determine how that policy is implemented, and the current guidelines require new students' families to provide several forms of identification and proof of residency, which is then re-verified for all students when they enter sixth grade and ninth grade.

Because of the "intense interest" in the residency issue, Dean said administrators are open to input from the school board and the community on potentially updating the way the policy is enforced.

One of the main concerns voiced by the trustees Monday was that the re-verification process is too cumbersome, especially the requirement to provide car insurance as proof of residency. People who drive a company car will not have car insurance in their family's name, plus some people do not own cars, said Trustee Kathleen Abke.

"You don't need a car to be a resident of any place, so that's just an odd requirement," said President Brian Clark Summerfield.

Treasurer Judy Gafa and Vice President Margaret Weertz suggested a requirement for trustees to go through the residency verification process every year so they understand what is being asked of families.

Weertz said she had to make multiple trips to the residency office to provide all the necessary documentation when re-verifying residency for her student, despite having lived in the same house in the district for 23 years.

"To me, when residents complain that it's so easy to get into the district and it's not verified, I'd have to dispute that," Weertz said. "It's worked very well so far. These are very strict, strict policies."

Abke said she's also concerned about people attempting to investigate students' residency status on their own.

"I've had people tell me they've followed kids home (to see if they really live in the district), and that is extremely concerning for me, extremely concerning," Abke said. "That's a tremendous safety issue and it's against the law. I want us to have a good policy. I want us to have a flexible policy, because some of these requirements could be extremely difficult or impossible to produce."

Superintendent Gary Niehaus is starting his third year leading the school district. As part of his introduction to the Grosse Pointe Schools, Niehaus said he met with representatives from the Residents for Residency group that aims to protect against residency fraud within the school district.

Their input has guided the administration's decision to launch the anonymous tip line, add the requirement to provide car insurance as proof of residency and hire third-party investigators to follow-up on cases of suspected residency fraud, Niehaus said.

Going into this school year, 806 students starting sixth and ninth grade needed to have their families re-verify their residency, according to a report to the board Monday. As of the first day of school, 24 students had not re-verified their residency and they will be under further investigation.

In the 2016-17 school year, Grosse Pointe's anonymous residency tip line received 100 tips, which resulted in 64 students being investigated and six of them being excluded from the school district.

That's a decrease from the year before, when the tip line received 157 tips that led to 190 students being investigated and 30 of them being excluded from the school district.

In the past three school years, residency investigations and related legal fees have cost the school district a total of $74,500, Niehaus said.