Foreclosure Crisis A Factor In Turmoil For School Districts, Students?

The Wall Street Journal reports:

• Some school districts, hoping to control costs and prevent overcrowding, are intensifying efforts to make sure students actually live where they are registered. Districts from Florida to California are hiring private investigators, creating anonymous tip lines and imposing penalties when they believe people have registered at false addresses. The measures often are spurred by parents who feel they pay a premium in property taxes to get their children into good schools.

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• One reason for the crackdown is the rise in home foreclosures, which may prod parents into faking addresses to keep their children at their current schools, some in the field say. "Foreclosure rates are up. Displacement is up. People are becoming homeless," says William Beitler, a private investigator specializing in address verification for school districts in the Chicago area.

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• For families facing foreclosure, avoiding a school change is often a priority. "For us, it was huge," said Mike Bertrand, a 36-year-old father of two in Newbury Park, Calif. [...] Carmela Sanchez is desperately trying to hang on to her house so her daughters, 11 and 16, can stay in their Highland Park, Ill., schools and keep up their ballet training. [...] The bank has said she can stay in the house until at least the end of the year. If she can't work out new loan terms with her bank, she figures, she'll have to pull the kids out of school and move somewhere less expensive. "I'm petrified it will affect them," she says. "They've been through enough."

For more, see School Districts Get Tough As Home Foreclosures Rise (if link is unavailable, go here - then click link for the story; you may also have to click the "Refresh" button on the web page to get to the story).