Schools' responsibilities

When a student enrolls in a school district in Missouri, parents provide information about the student that includes the student's address. School administrators say they have to trust that information is correct, but much rides on its validity.

State aid to school districts is based on the number of students who are enrolled.

Last month, the Leopold School District began an inquiry into an anonymous allegation that nearly one-fourth of its students live outside the district boundary and are illegally enrolled. The superintendent says the job of verifying residency isn't easy, because school boundaries zigzag from one side of the road to the other.

Investigating a similar complaint, officials in the Altenburg School District in Perry County found that six of 24 students alleged to live outside the district boundaries were in fact illegally enrolled. The others qualified for exceptions. An exception is made for children of school employees.

A bill in the Missouri House of Representatives would dispense with this issue by allowing students to enroll in any school district within 30 miles of their home district as long as classroom space is available. State aid for open-enrollment students would go to the host district. The bill is opposed by most education groups because it enables parents to send their children to school districts they don't support with property taxes.

Determining that a student lives within the boundaries of a school district should not be a matter of faith, given the amount of money at stake and the potential for importing good athletes. A database of every address within the district (the U.S. Postal Service has one) can be checked against each new enrollment. If false information is supplied, that's the parents' fault. But school districts have no business guessing whether a student belongs to them.