Facts, information hard to come by on number of Yuma County BORDER-CROSSING STUDENTS
Rumors of students living across the southern border but attending school in the U.S. are heard every year, but little information is available to verify the claims.
“I just know that there are people who say that that occurs,” Yuma County School Superintendent Tom Tyree said of the rumors, but he did not know of any specific cases or situations.
The federal government and the state do allow U.S. citizens living abroad to attend Arizona schools, but there are visa requirements on the federal level and Arizona statutes allow school boards to charge tuition to nonresidents. There are some exceptions to these requirements for military families, university researchers and others.
The state of Arizona requires public schools to obtain proof of residency, not citizenship, according to the Arizona Department of Education. Questioning citizenship status is forbidden under federal law.
According to San Luis, Ariz., businessman David Lara in a recent Yuma Sun article, one way parents circumvent the tuition requirement is by giving custody to a relative who lives in the U.S. This helps
students cross the border each day to attend school in Yuma County.
Districts do look at those situations as “questionable,” said Somerton School District Superintendent Laura Noel.
“The most common ‘questionable’ situation is when a child is ‘living’ with an aunt or grandmother. They bring in the proper documentation and they may even communicate that the child frequently returns to Mexico to see their other family members,” Noel wrote in an email. “We follow up with rumors and require the legally identified proof before we register any student.”
Noel said districts farther from the border, such as hers, may not have the problem with students/parents crossing daily to come into local schools, but she is aware that the situation could occur.
Eric Patten, communications director for the Yuma Union High School District, said he also hears rumors every year of that situation.
“I know that that’s something that happens, where parents will give up custodial rights to allow the student, their child, to live in Arizona to get an education. But I couldn’t estimate how much, or if at all in our district. But that’s clearly something that happens.”
Noel said that school districts follow guidelines passed down from entities such as the Arizona School Boards Association, which, among other things, helps districts interpret state and federal laws.
“In the schools, we don’t have the legal knowledge or authority to do other than what the law requires in our policy,” Noel wrote.
EXTENT OF THE ‘PROBLEM’
YUHSD, which was the subject of a Cronkite News Service article about the struggles of one U.S. citizen crossing the Mexican border to attend classes in San Luis, acknowledged that the issue is not just a local “problem.”
“It’s something that is not just here in Yuma, it’s all across Arizona … it’s something that obviously extends into New Mexico and Texas and southern San Diego County,” said Patten.
Even the use of the word “problem” is debatable for some.
“I hate calling it a ‘problem,’ because there is something admirable about students, these young kids especially, that are going through tremendous efforts to get a better education, and we’re in the business of educating kids,” Patten said. “And so I hate calling it a ‘problem.’ I hear it called that a lot and I wish there was another way to describe it. In reality we’re talking about the things we have to do to meet the state requirements, and in that way, I guess it is a problem.”
EDUCATION FOR ALL
Stefan Swiat, public information officer for the Arizona Department of Education, pointed to a federal case that prohibits schools asking parents or students their citizenship status to determine enrollment eligibility.
In 1982, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the classaction case Plyler v. Doe (which was combined with others from Texas) that denying undocumented children a public education violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. It was a landmark case that remains the rule of law today, according to the American Immigration Council.
In writing for the court, Justice William Joseph Brennan noted, “By denying these children a basic education, we deny them the ability to live within the structure of our civic institutions, and foreclose any realistic possibility that they will contribute in even the smallest way to the progress of our Nation.”
The AIC notes that since that ruling, multiple states have sought to soften Plyler by enacting their own laws to limit the education of undocumented and immigrant children.
But Emma Leheny, senior counsel for the National Education Association, noted that law “has not been modified or weakened, nor could it be through state legislation.”
Leheny said that penalties for violating Plyler would be determined by a federal court.
STATE REQUIREMENTS
Under state law, only Arizona residents are entitled to a free public education, according to a January 2018 memo to districts from ADE. Nonresident students are not allowed to be counted for state aid purposes and must pay tuition set by the school district governing board.
Students registering for school must have a parent or guardian prove residency, according to ARS 15802. Military families may provide copies of official orders. Under federal law, homeless students are not required to provide residency proof.
Yuma Elementary School District One allows enrollment for 30 days if proof of residency is not provided when the student is registered, said Superintendent Jamie Sheldahl.
“If residency is not established within the 30-day time frame, the parent/ guardian is notified and the student is withdrawn from school,” he said.
“The most common form of documentation is a utilities receipt or a rental agreement,” Sheldahl noted.
However, ADE requires that districts ensurestudent/parent residency information is accurate and verifiable. ADE reserves the right to conduct audits to ensure nonresidents are not reported for state aid.
The January 2018 memo noted that if ADE finds students attending without demonstrated accurate residency status, the district may be required to repay state aid for that student.
Lara, who also sits on the YUHSD governing board, suggested in a previous article that there are hundreds of families that avoid paying the tuition requirement.
“I am aware that there are permanent resident families and citizens who live the life of luxury in San Luis Rio Colorado, but send their children to public schools here and enjoy the benefits that should be only for those of us who live here and who pay taxes here.”
According to Arizona Revised Statute 15.823, doing that is illegal.
Title 15, section 823, says that children who are not residents of Arizona may attend school without paying tuition if evidence indicates that “the child’s physical, mental, moral or emotional health is best served by placement with a grandparent, brother, sister, stepbrother, stepsister, aunt or uncle who is a resident within the school district, unless the governing board determines that the placement is solely for the purpose of obtaining an education in this state without payment of tuition.”
Verification of residency is one of the reasons the YUHSD board approved the hiring of an attendance officer for San Luis High School, Patten pointed out, noting that the district used to have such a position before the Great Recession hit.
Not only could schools lose per-pupil funding, which is between $5,000 and $6,000 per student, but they could lose their accreditation status, Patten said.
Swiat said schools also could lose state and federal grant funding.
NO EASY SOLUTIONS
But since the number of border-crossing students cannot be easily ascertained, it is difficult to determine if there really is an issue.
“This issue is a complicated one. The estimates I have seen regarding the number coming in from Mexico seem very exaggerated, but perhaps that is because we are further from the border than a district like Gadsden,” Noel said of the Somerton district. “If I were to put an estimate on the number of students we have who claimed to live with a custodial family member, but actually cross daily, I would say zero.”
Patten said the district felt that the Cronkite article misconstrued a comment by Superintendent Gina Thompson that the district had “knowingly accepted false documentation for enrollment.”
“That’s where I think the misunderstanding with this has been, that it would be something purposeful. We’re not talking about millions of dollars, by allowing somebody to do something that is illegal or fraudulent. We’re talking about a much, much smaller number dollars-wise, so it’s really not worth it to not follow the rules,” he said.
KEEPING WATCH
Patten said there have been a few instances where false documents were discovered, or residency or guardianship could not be verified.
“We have uncovered some, to what extent, I’m not sure. But we have uncovered some, which some of the documentation that we have been given was not accurate, and was not honest,” he said.
At that point, what usually happens is that the student is disenrolled from the school by the family, Patten said.
YUHSD has been concentrating on monitoring documents for suspicious signs and “what might seem fishy,” Patten said, in order to be more vigilant and proactive.
“I think that’s sort of a misnomer in the community also, because of some of those voices out there that are saying that we’re actively, purposefully doing things to allow more students to come into our district, and it just doesn’t make sense, you know? Why would it be worth the public relations nightmare? Why would it be worth that public backlash for a few thousand dollars, to have a school with 40 kids in a class?”
Noel noted that chasing down residency issues is time-consuming and requires legal expertise.
“Most district employees do not want to pursue these issues because we are so understaffed and under-qualified to sort out the issues involved in ‘residency.’ Every family and every child has a story. How those individual stories need to be ‘legally’ treated is outside our area of expertise,” she wrote. “We are about teaching and learning. Since our district perception is that fraudulent cases are few and far between, we do our best to enforce the law as prescribed and put our attention back on instruction.”