Just ask any mother: what would you do to provide a better education for your children?
Kelley Williams-Bolar, a single mother who's going to college and working as a teaching assistant (and who has no prior criminal record) while living in a housing project, claimed that her two daughters live part time with their father who lives in a better school district.
The school disagreed, and hired a private investigator to film her dropping off her children. They wanted to charge her $30,000 and when she refused, the case went to court and the jury convicted her. The judge sentenced her to 5 years in prison, but suspended all but 10 days, with community service and probation.
Williams-Bolar's father, Edward Williams, told CNN affiliate WJW-TV that the children did live with him, so he believed the family was within the law.
He said his daughter's Akron neighborhood – where she lives in government-subsidized housing – isn't safe.
"She had 12 police reports that her house had been broken in, so what am I supposed to do? Just leave them there?" Williams said to WJW-TV. "I mean, I can protect them better if they was with me."
Williams-Bolar, a single mother, works as a teacher's aide at a high school in Akron and is just 12 credits away from earning a teaching degree at the University of Akron, according to the Beacon Journal.
Her felony conviction will bar her from being licensed to teach in Ohio.
The school, obviously, disagreed:
Copley-Fairlawn Superintendent Brian Poe told WJW-TV the case cost the district $30,000 in two years of lost tuition and $6,000 it spent on the investigation. [...]
"The way I look at it is, the bottom line, you need to follow the law," he said. "If you choose to step outside of the law, what's going to happen at that point is you are going to have to face the consequences for that."
Oh, and to make matters a bit muddier, Williams-Bolar is black and the school district is predominantly white.
Link - Thanks Tiffany!
"Fraud is fraud" or do you think that it's a heavy-handed punishment for someone trying to make better lives for their children?
http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2011/jan/31/kus-search-new-athletic-director-cost-just-more-62/
I don't feel I should have much of a say on how schools are run in America, given I don't live there, but I can't help but think the citizens would be better served if more people put their effort into fixing the REASONS people would lie about their district.
"My tax dollars go to my schools for MY kids."
Heyyy...and MY tax dollars go to YOUR schools for YOUR kids too! I pay several hundred dollars a year in school taxes EVERY year and I DON'T HAVE KIDS! I hope your kids are enjoying their nice school in their nice district where you moved to your nice house so your kids don't have to rub elbows with any 'hood rats from the projects. Just keep in mind that there are plenty of other childless people out there just like me who are forced to help pay for little Jimmy and Susie to have the laptop your Snob Hill school district hands out to every kid and who gives a crap about the kids of a single mother over in the HUD Alley part of town? They aren't from YOUR neighborhood so why should they have their hand in YOUR pocket? Never mind that their mother has been working hard for years to better herself and provide for her kids. BY HERSELF. Never mind that she wasn't a crackhead or a welfare queen pumping out a kid every year so the government handouts keep coming and she won't have to go to the botheration of working for the rest of her life.
If thinking this is shameful and disgusting makes me a "bleeding heart" then so be it. At least I *HAVE* a heart, you self-righteous pig bastard.