School Committee approves Superintendent's plan to enforce City residency for Boston's exam schools

BOSTON - The Boston School Committee yesterday approved a 10-point plan to identify and dismiss from the City's three exam schools students who falsify Boston residency. The plan proposed by Superintendent Thomas W. Payzant is the result of recommendations developed by a work group convened last month to explore the issue.

Mayor Thomas M. Menino and others had challenged the School Committee and Superintendent to address the problem of families who live outside of the city providing fraudulent information about Boston residency to maintain seats in Boston's prestigious exam schools - the John D. O'Bryant School of Mathematics and Science, Boston Latin Academy and Boston Latin School.

"The fact that some families who live outside of Boston are depriving City residents of these educational opportunities is unacceptable," said Elizabeth Reilinger, Chair of the School Committee. "We are pleased that the school department now has a concrete plan in place to take whatever measures are required to ensure that only students who are legal residents of the City of Boston will be allowed to attend our schools."

Superintendent Payzant noted that the recommendations he presented to the School Committee were designed to expand the efforts already in place to identify and investigate residency violators. The Boston Public Schools dismissed several students earlier this year from Boston Latin School after determining that the students did not legally reside in Boston.

Dr. Payzant said, "With these additional steps, we will improve our ability to identify suspected violators, investigate their residency, and impose appropriate consequences for non-Boston residents found to be attending exam schools."

Under the 10-point plan, the Boston Public Schools will:

1. Retain the services of an investigative agency and/or hire a residency investigator to pursue tips and conduct proactive investigations of students.
2. Institute random residency audits of exam school students. In addition to targeted efforts for students suspected of non-residency, investigators will conduct a limited number of residency checks of exam school students selected at random.
3. Notify families about the residency requirement and about consequences for falsifying residency through a variety of means (including letters to parents, the BPS policy handbook, neighborhood newspapers, and other avenues).
4. Reserve the right to impose additional consequences beyond dismissal from the school, including legal action, against families found to be in violation of the residency policy.
5. Reserve the right to withhold and/or revoke BPS-administered scholarships and prizes from exam school students who are found to have violated the residency policy.
6. Require parents of every student at the exam schools to sign an annual legal affidavit at the start of every school year affirming legal residency in the City of Boston and agreeing to notify BPS of any residency changes that take place during the school year.
7. Establish a dedicated phone line to receive tips from students, parents, staff, neighbors and others about students suspected of being in violation of the residency requirement.
8. In collaboration with the MBTA, conduct spot-checks of key train stations from which out-of-city students commute to BPS exam schools.
9. Announce a one-time amnesty period of one week during which non-resident families may disclose without penalty their true legal residence and transfer to their home school district.
10. In all residency inquiries, permit investigators to require families to produce additional proof of residency beyond those already required. These may include, but not be limited to, driver's license, car insurance/registration, W-2 form, property tax bill, and other documents currently requested by the City of Boston to prove residency of City employees.

Next month, the School Committee will consider modifications to the exam school application policy, including the possibility of requiring Boston residency of all exam school applicants at the time the admissions test is administered.

Dr. Payzant added that the work group will continue to meet to explore how these strategies may be used to identify and dismiss residency violators in other Boston Public Schools.