Kelley Williams-Bolar is a black single mother who was in school studying to become a teacher. Williams-Bolar lives in a housing project in Akron, Ohio, but she sent her two children to a school in the wealthier Copley-Fairlawn District, where her father resides. She did so out of concerns for the girls’ safety. She was trying to make a better life for her family. She was doing the best she could within the confines of an unjust system.
On Saturday, a jury found Williams-Bolar guilty on two counts of tampering with records. She was also facing one count of grand theft, but the jury could not reach a verdict. Her father, Edward L. Williams, was charged with a fourth-degree felony of grand theft. The pair were charged with defrauding the school system for two years of educational services for the girls. The Copley-Fairlawn District spent about $6,000 to bring the case to trial. That included hiring a private investigator who followed and secretly videotaped Williams-Bolar and her children. She was sentenced to ten days in jail and has also been ordered to serve three years probation and 80 hours of community service for a felony conviction. She will no longer be eligible to teach.
Superintendent Brain Poe said Copley-Fairlawn has lost hundreds of thousand of dollars because of parents illegally enrolling their children into the schools.
Poe said residency disputes are usually resolved after parents prove that they live in the district, pay tuition or remove their kids from the schools.
This marked the first time that one of their residency challenges went before a jury in criminal court. Poe said prosecuting this case was meant to send a message.
“If you’re paying taxes on a home here… those dollars need to stay home with our students,” Poe said.
As Cara at The Curvature put it:
As Superintendent Poe explicitly states up above, this is about “our” tax dollars, and keeping them where they belong. And anytime we start talking about “us” and “them,” we need to look at what we mean by those words, because it rarely reflects well on our intentions and prejudices. William-Bolar crossed a border that was designed to keep her out. She “stole” resources that were apparently not her or her children’s to have.
Dr. Boyce Watkins’ blog post is an excellent analysis of the case, and an important read.
American educational apartheid dictates that schools in poorer neighborhoods are of significantly less quality than other schools. The racial divisions within American schools are nothing less than a blatant and consistent human rights violation and should certainly be treated as such.
Williams-Bolas needs help to pay the legal fees she will incur in appealing the judge’s verdict.
You can send donations to the National Action Network Akron Chapter, c/o Kelley Williams-Bolar, P.O. Box 4152, Akron, Ohio, 44321. Checks can be made payable to Williams-Bolar.
Copley-Fairlawn has lost hundreds of thousand of dollars because of parents illegally enrolling their children into the schools.
I’d love to know how many of those other parents they prosecuted and whether any of them were white.
If the judicial system prosecuted every white family that rented an apartment/used a friend or family member’s address to send their kid to a more desirable zoned school, they would have to build a whole new jail for every metropolitan area in the US.
It’s a fucking travesty.
I remember quite a few classmates doing this when I was in school. The schools in their neighborhoods sucked. Who can blame them?
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This is absolutely shocking. Was there really no better way to handle this alleged problem?
What a way to reinforce racial divides and teach kids a lesson that should have been found only in history books.
The funding of schools via property taxes is inherently unfair and props up the existing power structure very effectively and deliberately. Education is a resource that should be equally available to every child in this country.
And I wonder how school voucher supporters will feel about this situation. For them, it’s fine to let kids have some limited opportunities to escape a failing school system-as long as the powers that be can control it.
I was one of the kids who went to a different school than the one in my district. I went to the school where my grandmother worked, which was one of the better schools in our city. My grandmother was the cafeteria manager. We lied on the paper work and said that I lived with her. Thing is, everyone knew! Her boss knew, the principle knew, my teachers knew, and no one cared or made a stink. Oh, but we’re white.
My heart breaks for Ms. Williams-Bolar. She was doing whatever she could to make sure her daughters had the best start in life. Seriously, ten days in jail? Three fucking years probation? I’m too filled with rage to add anything constructive to the conversation.
@mischiefmanager: My brain went straight to that too, because Williams-Bolar seems like a poster parent for the “involved” caretakers voucher advocates want to help out. If you were to ask her, she’d probably LOVE a voucher for each kid.
I guess the progressive response is to say no, vouchers create brain-drained, defunded hellholes after expatriating the tops of their classes in failing schools, so that’s a non-starter. The funding base should be collected at the state or federal level and allocated by specific need (books, swimming pool, computer lab) and enrollment, and since school systems must inevitably be geographically based so as to keep kids close to their families and foster community involvement, the poorer ones should be flooded with antipoverty measures in an attempt to neutralize the learning obstacles presented by hardship.
@BearDownBears: Exactly. Vouchers prop up parochial schools, take funds away from public schools, and depend on the energy of parents to get the kids involved. But the problem with that latter is that it leaves out the very kids who need help the most-the ones whose parents cannot or will not seek the best they can find for their kids.
We all pay when kids don’t get the education they need and deserve, so this is not just a neighborhood problem. It’s a state and national problem.
I remember reading that Arizona (?) funds schools on a per-pupil basis: just adds up the taxes collected statewide for that purpose, divides by the total number of students in public school that year, and sends checks to the schools. That was almost ten years ago, and I’ve still never met anyone who can explain why this isn’t the policy for all states. “Our” tax dollars, indeed.
“The funding base should be collected at the state or federal level and allocated by specific need (books, swimming pool, computer lab) and enrollment, and since school systems must inevitably be geographically based so as to keep kids close to their families and foster community involvement, the poorer ones should be flooded with antipoverty measures in an attempt to neutralize the learning obstacles presented by hardship.”
Don’t be ridiculous. This makes far too much sense for the ruling class to do it. If we leveled the playing field, then those at the top would have no automatic right or “ability” to stay at the top, and everyone knows that maintaining the current power structure has everything to do with maintaining the current bureaucracy and institutional set up. Doing something like this–the decent thing to do–is asking the powerful to divest themselves of their own privilege.
@Cimorene: Hell, I’d outlaw private high schools and make multi-school districts in city centers. I’m not above blackmailing the rich with the welfare of their own children.
This is fucked. I had a friend in high school who is now going to Harvard without having to pay tuition because his mother makes less than whatever the cutoff is. However, his mother is in a longterm, committed relationship with a guy who makes quite a lot of money, and had been for years before this friend went to school, and the *only* reason they haven’t gotten married is so they don’t have to pay his tuition. And nothing is ever going to happen to correct that situation. But then again, this friend is white and male.
@BearDownCBears – Amen!
Im shocked and all i can think of is this poor woman trying to get a good education for her daughters while getting one herself which she can no longer use thanks to the bullshit.
1) educate everybody for everybody’s benefit, obvs, right?
2) we need to stop worshiping the magical constitution: education is not a local concern, it is at least a state wide concern, and the money should likewise be pooled.
3) I would say national in point 2 but truth be told I worry about some state’s ideas on education: eg Texas, Kansas.
One thesis of “The Two-Income Trap” by Warren and Tyagi (2003) is that families take out mortgages that are beyond their means not because they want a giant house in a fancy neighborhood, but because they want their children in good school districts.