Staying within the lines

In rural Missouri, school boundary lines often are as crooked as a country road.

Area administrators say the confusing boundaries can make it a tough task to tell whether students live in the district.

Last month, school officials in the small, rural Leopold School District began investigating allegations that as many as 42 students -- nearly a fourth of the student population -- live outside the school district and are enrolled illegally. The ongoing investigation stems from an anonymous written complaint made to the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.

"Our district boundaries zig and zag from one side of the road to the other side of the road," said Leopold superintendent Derek Urhahn, who hopes to finish his inquiry into the out-of-district-students issue this week.

As a result of the allegations, the Leopold School District plans to start asking parents to sign an enrollment form stating their children live in the district.

Linda Engelmann, who has worked in the Altenburg School District for 18 years, teaches fifth- and sixth-graders in the same room. (Diane L. Wilson)

Urhahn said he's been telling parents to check their county tax receipts if they are uncertain in which school district they reside.

But even then, Urhahn and superintendents in other Southeast Missouri districts say they typically don't question whether a student lives in the district. Urhahn said school districts take the parents' word on the matter. "You hope they tell you the truth," he said.

Under state law, public school districts must charge tuition to nonresident students except in certain cases. Those exceptions include children of school employees, homeless students, foster children who previously resided in the district and certain cases in which farmland is in the district but the residence is in another.

The Missouri School Boards' Association says the issue of out-of-district students isn't limited to Southeast Missouri. Determining residency is a challenge for school administrators throughout the state in both rural and urban districts, said Susan Goldammer, senior director of school laws for the association.

"There is probably not a district in the state that isn't accidentally educating someone who doesn't live in the district," she said.

In some districts, she said, homes straddle boundary lines. Some parents give false addresses. And some school districts use school resource officers to investigate study residency cases.

"Most districts try to ask all the appropriate questions at enrollment time," Goldammer said, "and then investigate when they receive complaints."

Altenburg complaint

Officials in the tiny Altenburg School District in Perry County recently investigated an anonymous complaint made to DESE, alleging that 24 of the school system's 102 students live outside of the district.

Altenburg superintendent Richard Hoffman said school officials found that 11 of the 24 students were children of employees of the school district, one of the residency exceptions allowed by state law. Several other students left the kindergarten-through-eighth-grade school district earlier in the school year, met the acreage exception or were found to be living in the district, Hoffman said.

The end result is that the district had to ask for tuition from only six students, most of whom had been informed about the tuition requirement earlier in the school year, he said.

Tom Quinn, DESE's director of school governance, said Hoffman addressed the complaint and reported the findings to the state agency. "For us right now, his district is not an issue," Quinn said.

DESE officials say they understand that school district staff sometimes mistakenly enroll students as resident students but that once the problem is discovered, school district officials need to address them.

Nonresident students need to pay tuition or enroll in the proper school district, Quinn said. State law prohibits districts from providing bus transportation for students who live outside the district.

School districts should not be receiving state aid for out-of-district students who don't meet a legal exception, Quinn said. But unless a district illegally enrolls out-of-district students deliberately to get added state aid, DESE won't impose a financial penalty on the school as long as the problem is addressed, he said.

Quinn said it's up to the individual school district to set the amount of tuition.

In Altenburg, the tuition is $200 a year. Hoffman said the district keeps tuition low to aid area families, many of whom enroll their children in public school kindergarten before sending them to area Lutheran schools.

Most school boundaries date from when school districts were consolidated in the 1940s and 1950s, he said.

Some boundaries make little sense. "We have families that live two miles or less from this school that are not in this school district," said Hoffman.

For them, it's more convenient to send their children to Altenburg than to Perryville schools 22 miles away, he said.

Difficult to change

School districts can seek to change boundaries, but that isn't easy.

To put such an issue on the ballot, petitions have to be presented to the school boards in both affected school districts. The petitions must have signatures of registered voters totaling at least 10 percent of the number who turned out in the last April election.

The issue has to pass by a majority vote in both districts for the boundary change to occur. It's difficult to get voters to approve a change in the school district that would be losing land and tax money, Goldammer said.

If the boundary change proposal passes in only one of the affected districts, the matter can be appealed to a state arbitration board. Under state law, the three-member panel appointed by the State Board of Education must look at what is best for the students in ruling on any boundary change, Goldammer said. The arbitration board's decision is final.

Naylor School District superintendent Stephen Cookson said student residency is an issue in every school district. "Any school superintendent that says it is not happening in their district is naive," he said.

In Cookson's Bootheel district, it can even be difficult to tell from a mailing address as to whether a family lives in Missouri or Arkansas. Some Arkansas residents live along the border with Missouri.

"Their address is Naylor, Mo., because the mailbox sits on the Missouri side of the road," he said.

Scott City School District superintendent Diann Bradshaw-Ulmer said she has driven out to a student's home on occasion to determine whether the residence is in the school district.

"If we get a phone call or it is reported to us that there is a discrepancy, we do try to check it out," she said.

Linda Engelmann, who has worked at the Altenburg School District for 18 years, teaches fifth- and sixth-graders in the same room. (Diane L. Wilson)

But she said that with today's mobile society it's hard to tell if every student enrolled as a resident student actually lives in the district.

"We can't go around and do bed checks," Bradshaw-Ulmer said.

mbliss@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 123