Posted on 06/21/2010 7:32:07 AM PDT by Grampa Dave
Tighter attendance rules for American Canyon schools
By KERANA TODOROV, Register Staff Writer | Posted: Saturday, June 19, 2010 12:00 am
Starting this fall, public school parents in American Canyon will have to show proof that they live in American Canyon, not only when they register their children, but every year after too.
The Napa Valley Unified School District is imposing a strict residency test to keep interlopers, including those from Vallejo and Fairfield, from squeezing out American Canyon youngsters from local schools.
Under district policies, only American Canyon children can attend the city’s three elementary schools, middle school and the new American Canyon High School.
Under the new rules, parents will have to present photo identification and two documents printed within the month showing a current address. They can be payroll stubs or bills for a landline phone, water or any other utility.
The new rules could eventually be implemented in other areas in the Napa Valley Unified School District, including those in the city of Napa, officials said.
“In American Canyon, it’s an immediate need,” Maren Rocca Hunt, the departing principal at American Canyon’s Canyon Oak Elementary School, told the NVUSD’s board of trustees Thursday.
“It’s an ongoing residency issue,” Rocca Hunt said. Some 63 students who deserved to attend Canyon Oak last year had to go across town to Donaldson Way Elementary School because Canyon Oak was full, she said.
The school district has used the American Canyon Police Department to verify some addresses, but needs a better system. Students deserve to attend their neighborhood schools, Rocca Hunt said.
“We just can’t depend on the police department to do all these residency checks all the time,” said Rocca Hunt, who is moving to an administrative job at district headquarters in Napa.
Every year, principals in American Canyon have been forced to ask parents to remove their children because the families live outside the school’s attendance boundaries.
Canyon Oaks and the two other elementary schools — Donaldson Way and Napa Junction — as well as American Canyon Middle School have notified parents of the new policy.
Mark Brewer, American Canyon High School’s principal, said the high school will follow the same policy as the other public schools in American Canyon.
The rules, approved administratively on May 17, went to the NVUSD’s board of trustees for review Thursday.
The article was a co front page article in the Napa Register about the opening of the new high school.
I have had to do this every year for the past twelve years...but then, I live in Chula Vista, CA.
Tight budgets and severe shortages of money is forcing school districts to do what should have been done since the days of Gerry Brown.
Our two sons are now 40 something. When they were in school and just to get into school and for each semester, my wife had to show her drivers’s license and copies of the boy’s COLB from kindergarden age through high school.
When, I took our older son to enroll at one of the state universities, I had to show my Ca Driver’s license and a property tax bill copy. He had to show his Driver’s License and give them a copy of his COLB.
This iding is not aimed at illegals, but at those, who don’t live in the city/county or a school district and want their kids to go to school of their choice. It is aimed at everyone bringing their children to the school for enrollment.
All of us, who are legal have had to do this for decades.
Our DIL like my wife, carries copies of our grandkids’s COLBs and a property tax bill copy and of course her photo driver’s license. The picture id is really a joke with her. She is very active on the school as a parent, helps to raise a lot of money for the school and does other projects. The admin people still have to ask for her ID for enrollment each semester.
My wife and I have been mystery readers in the kids classes. We bring a book of interest, read a chapter and donate it to the class library. We had to show our IDs to the admin people who then escorted us to the class where we would read.
When we moved into a fast-growing city in California nearly eighteen years ago, I couldn’t get my kindergartner and first-grader into the local school. We moved into a neighborhood just a block away from the nearest elementary school and the middle school was just past the elementary school through a nice park. The reason we couldn’t get them in was, maybe partly due to illegals, but mainly it was because the politicians and education bureaucrats, teachers and personnel got first crack at any school in the district. Having middle and elementary schools in close proximity was nice for drop-offs and pickups, and being in a nice area of town next to a park didn’t hurt either. Our kids were sent to separate schools in opposite parts of town.
fyi
In our area and our DIL’s area, local politics and favors often impact enrollment at several schools.
The grade school our sons went to has been and is one of the best for a long time in our city. It is very obvious that certain “in” elites drive their kids a few miles in their German luxury* cars or Volvos* past a few schools to get their kids here. That hopefully will be stopped. In good weather most of the local kids walk to school and there must be a hundred luxury vehicles/suvs from other neighborhoods dropping kids off and picking them up in good weather as well as bad. That causes traffic jams at three points close and around the school.
The grade school where our grandkids go is one of the better and there has been a constant push red zone certain areas like where they live to allow some of the older ins into the school. Our DIL has led successful battles and local election battles to keep her kids in that school.
*Many if not most of the carpet bagging parents in their high cost foriegn cars have Obama stickers on their bumpers.
Nothing wrong with providing documentation verification, voting included.
Papers Please............
No problem.
You can’t do this! This is racist!
“You can’t do this! This is racist!”
It is equal opportunity racism and some blonde blue eyed elite liberals will be profiled and stopped next fall if and when this spreads up valley.
Our problem too. While there was an over-crowding problem throughout the city, the “more equal pigs” got to be in line before the others. The school my kids attended is still motor central each morning and afternoon with lots of expensive cars idling in the parking lots and blocking traffic to the neighborhoods. Living just a block from the school, I have to time my trips not to coincide with school hours, or find the shortcuts.
Time and the recession is easing the problem somewhat. Don’t see too many Obama stickers anymore.
Great description: The more equal pigs.
We see more Obama stickers at the prize schools on the high priced luxury cars to pick up their carpet bagging kids than we see at the parking lots for city/county thugs.
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