Woman Arrested For Wrong School District
This is via Susie, a Stamford Advocate article: Bridgeport woman arrested for registering son in Norwalk school
NORWALK — A homeless woman from Bridgeport who enrolled her 6-year-old son at a Norwalk elementary school has become the first in the city to be charged with stealing more than $15,000 for the cost of her child’s education.
Tonya McDowell, 33, whose last known address was 66 Priscilla St., Bridgeport, was charged Thursday with first-degree larceny and conspiracy to commit first-degree larceny for allegedly stealing $15,686 from Norwalk schools. She was released after posting a $25,000 bond.
McDowell’s babysitter, Ana Rebecca Marques, was also evicted from her Roodner Court public housing apartment for providing documents to enroll the child at Brookside Elementary School.
…Mayor Richard Moccia said that he was aware that an investigation was proceeding in the case and that an arrest was possible.
“This now sends a message to other parents that may have been living in other towns and registering their kids with phony addresses,” he said.
People have been presenting this as the mother wanting a better education for her child, which may be true, but what is also true is that her babysitter lives in Norwalk, which mean the child would be dropped off at the babysitter’s house directly from school, rather than the mother having to arrange transportation from a Bridgeport school to Norwalk every school day.
The mother is homeless, which means she doesn’t actually have an address. She is sleeping at a house in Bridgeport for now, but she has also slept at the homeless shelter in Norwalk.
Based on the article, this is the mayor’s idea, not something the school did, no doubt to prove what concern he has for the budget of the city of Norwalk … except:
- $15,686 for a first-grader? What do they have a 1 to 5 teacher-student ratio and limos instead of buses?
- Saving money? Felony investigation, arrest, booking, public defender, trial – these are free?
Norwalk had better hope that no national advocacy group decides to get involved in this case, because it could be facing some serious attorney’s fees before this is over, as well as a lot of the wrong kind of publicity.
Attacking poor women and children to prove you are serious about the budget, may be popular in Norwalk, but the rest of the world thinks you are a jerk, mayor.
9 comments
Not only are homeless advocates going to make hay over this one, this is such a clear-cut violation of the federal McKinney-Vento law protecting the right of homeless children to an education (basically, you *can’t* expel a homeless child for not having an address in your district if he in fact has no permanent address, it’s as illegal as killing your idiot cousin that annoys you with his very existence) that I wouldn’t be surprised if the Office of Civil Rights weren’t pulled into it too. I’ve been in districts where the OCR was called in, and it ain’t pretty. They’re going to be hauling in every document you have in your entire system that might possibly show any kind of systemic discrimination against homeless children, and a lot of administrators (and school board members, if they had anything to do with setting up those policies!) are going to get a lot of grey hairs over the thought of possible criminal prosecution…
– Badtux the “WTF were they thinking?!” Penguin
And BTW, according to Wikipedia, Mayor Richard Moccia is a Republican. Let’s see, not being content to go after orphans, the lizard people are going after homeless children too? Just when you thought they could go no lower…
– Badtux the Head-shakin’ Penguin
The potential for Federal lawsuits is manifold, which is why schools don’t do anything other than send a note home saying “your child is in the wrong district”, and never let these things get near a court. The only way the district stays out of court is if they don’t accept any Federal money of any kind for anything, which has a zero probability these days.
People get really upset at school board meetings when you tell them that if they don’t like Federal “interference” simply stop taking Federal money. They want the money, because school taxes would shoot up without it.
If the kid was a good football player, no one would say anything.
Fixing the problems is difficult and painful, so they just pick a group with no power and attack them to deflect attention from their own failures.
The city government must be proud of themselves, now they have two homeless women, and a bewildered child who is, no doubt, now in foster care, because his mother was thrown in jail.
oh geez, good thing i was all cheerful from reading about the solar panel blowout first, or this would have been even more depressing to read about.
I expect more this kind of garbage, especially since the Austerians have taken the Village.
Well, the wealthier districts here in the Silly Cone Valley do their best to keep out the little people, they’ll evict you from their district if they can find a permanent address for you in some other district, but even they are scared to try to kick out homeless children because the Federal laws involved are pretty dadburned strict. You come in for a *world* of hurt if you try to kick out the homeless — as in, not only can the Dept. of Education refer you to the Office of Civil Rights and a court fine you huge sums of money and put an injunction on your lily white school board’s ass, but they can also yank all your other Federal funding too.
But I notice that it’s not the school district driving this, it’s the mayor. So apparently this is a new tactic the lizard people are trying — rather than have the school district simply kick out homeless kids, instead arrest their parents and jail the parents for theft. Presto, instant no more homeless kids in your school! (Just foster kids).
The lady made a major mistake talking to the police at all, other than to state that she was exercising her right to an attorney. When something ludicrous like this happens to you, the temptation is that you can explain to the police that it’s ridiculous and thus you should be let go. But they already know it’s ridiculous, their job is to get you convicted in a court of law for the ridiculous thing they’re arresting you for.
Actually, whether this goes anywhere is going to depend on the judge, and whether they can actually prove that she is living at the Bridgeport address, rather than visiting. A good attorney should be able to generate a lot of reasonable doubt on that issue.
Another problem is that school officials didn’t seem to be aware of the situation until the arrest. That is hardly normal procedure, nor the fact that this was initiated by the housing authority.
I can see this being a major problem for the town, for a long time to come.
What an idiotic over reaction. I hope that the coucil gets creamed for such a crass and heavy handed approach
The current Republican party is synonymous with evil. Evil is the only way you can understand attacking the helpless. The mayor may cost his town’s school district all of their Federal funding, which comes to a good deal more than the claimed damage of $15,000.