This post was contributed by a community member. The views expressed here are the author's own.

Schools

School Address Reverification Reopens Old Wounds

The return of the address verification process for families in the Albany Unified School District has resurfaced complaints that arose last year, along with several suggestions from parents to improve the process.

Last month, the announced that it again was time for parents of district students to  to prove they belong in the district. It's a new tradition that began last year and will continue into the forseeable future. 

Monday, some parents reported receiving an automated telephone call reminding them that the for the 2012-13 school year. 

A number of parents in comments on Albany Patch in March, calling it a waste of time and money. 

Find out what's happening in Albanywith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Others said they saw the process as an important way to ensure that classrooms include only students who live in the district or have received the appropriate approval to attend Albany schools. 

District officials said last year that the process was important particularly in light of a long waiting list of students hoping to get into Albany schools. Officials said they were concerned because some families had , or failed to update their address after moving out of town. These students, they explained, took up slots that otherwise could have been filled by students on the lengthy waiting list. 

Find out what's happening in Albanywith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Though some families have argued for address verification as a means to decrease enrollment and potentially lead to smaller classes, the district has not espoused this position. The superintendent has said it's important for the district to try to avoid declining enrollment and protect state funds coming to Albany students, adding that additional students can increase classroom offerings for all students. 

LAST YEAR'S VERIFICATION PROCESS: A BUMPY RIDE

Patch spoke with in October about interdistrict transfers and enrollment.

In the early 1990s, she said, Albany Unified recruited students from other districts as a way to raise money in the face of declining revenue.

“That was a strategy that worked,” Stephenson said. “Albany Unified is a high performing district surrounded by other districts that are not as high performing.”

Stephenson said non-resident students became an issue when the district took a parcel tax to voters several years ago.

“There was a concern expressed that you have all of these and they are not paying their fair share. What it takes to create an Albany education also requires a great deal of money provided by the taxpayers of Albany,” Stephenson said.

Stephenson allowed that the district's first attempt to verify residency “did not go terribly well.”

Last March, the district sought to verify the residency of every student attending Albany schools. By July, Stephenson said, the district had only verified half of the students. “We realized we were going to have a real crunch and we brought in additional resources,” she said. 

Stephenson said  last school year and this school year because they didn’t live in Albany.

This school year, the district admitted many families from the waiting list, according to Stephenson. The admitted families included some who had lied earlier about their residency and were put at the bottom of the waiting list. Stephenson did not provide firm figures, but she said the waiting list “is not robust.”

SUPERINTENDENT: "WE CAN'T FILL THE SLOTS"

This March, the district reported that 2011-12 enrollment had been 37 students lower than projected, and its average daily attendance (ADA) dropped slightly. Both factors lead to less money from the state.

 told the school board that, historically, the district has had long waiting lists as students tried to transfer into the district. Now, as other districts are trying to keep students and bolster their own ADA numbers, they've allowed fewer and fewer transfers. 

"We do not have waiting lists as we had before," said Stephenson. "We're not able to fill those slots."

Overall enrollment declined by 79 students compared to the prior year, according to a January 2012 enrollment report released by the district (attached here as a PDF). 

Of the 3,803 students in the district, nearly 500 are permitted transfers from other districts. In September, the district identified 83 of these students as newly accepted. (The district said another 19 families who applied for transfer declined the offer to return to Albany.)

FOR SOME, A CHALLENGING PROCESS

Allen Cain is a member of one of the families who ultimately declined the offer. But he said the reason was more the result of a botched process that left his family feeling vilified and punished than anything else.

Though some parents in the district described the 2011 verification and enrollment processes as smooth, with "courteous" and "downright pleasant, efficient service," many others described long lines, technical glitches, administrative mix-ups and, according to some, the misplacement of documentation that had been submitted months earlier. 

Cain, who now lives in El Cerrito with his wife and their eighth-grade daughter, said last year's efforts to clean up the district's records on out-of-district students was painful. 

His daughter attended Albany schools from second through seventh grade, though Cain said the family moved out of the city in 2008. He said he jumped at the district's last year, and aimed to be one of the first to get on the waiting list for consideration to enroll for 2011-12 with the proper permit.

(He acknowledged that he should have filed with the district sooner, but said he wanted to wait until his daughter finished middle school before risking the possible upheaval of a new district.)

On May 27, he said, he received a letter from the district saying his daughter had been accepted for 2011-12. She received a class schedule and a locker assignment in July. 

In August, during school orientation, however, she was told at that she was not registered with the district, and that she would need to go to the district office to clear things up. 

Cain said she called him crying from Cornell School, unsure where to go or what to do. (She had walked to the site of the old administration building to find it empty; district offices are temporarily .) Cain said he picked her up and they went to the Village, where he recalls waiting for an hour to be told his daughter was on the waitlist, but that it wasn't yet clear if there was room for her.

Ultimately her parents enrolled her in private school, as they waited week after week for word from the district about whether she could return to Albany schools. September came and went, Cain said, and it was well into October when he said he headed down to the district office to find out his daughter's status. 

He said, during an impromptu meeting, the superintendent told him his daughter had been accepted back into Albany the prior day. 

"When would I have found that out?" he asked.

"You would have gotten a phone call or a letter," he recalls Stephenson telling him. 

At that point, he said, his daughter already had settled into life at her new school, so whether or not to come back to Albany schools for 2011-12 was no longer on the table. But Cain took issue with how events unfolded.

"We're not upset she didn't go back," he said last fall. "It hurts, but the wounds have already started to heal. It's the procedure that took place. The behavior that we encountered was not customer service-like. I expect so much more from a small, tightly-run district."

Cain himself graduated from Albany schools and was a known presence on Solano for years . He runs the , and was on the board for the Albany YMCA, and involved with other civic organizations. He described himself as an active and engaged parent who took part in field trips, and whose family donated regularly to the PTA and numerous Albany school fundraising organizations. 

He didn't expect any favoritism, he said, adding that, in fact, he was glad the system appeared to be fair in this respect. But he wondered about others who could have had a similar experience but might have been less able to advocate for themselves. 

"If they're turning me away the way they turned me away, I hate to imagine how they're treating people they're not familiar with," he said.

OPEN QUESTIONS, A RANGE OF SUGGESTIONS

In the face of , declining state dollars and linked to the fall election, some parents said the verification process raised more questions than it has thus far answered. 

"I would VERY much like to know how many students had to be re-enrolled at the last minute, how many students who are legally entitled to a place in the Albany schools were not placed in class(es) due to problems with the re-enrollment program, and just how much this process cost the District, in dollars and staff time," wrote Holly McCroskey last August on Albany Patch. "I'd also like to know if there has been any benefit to this new program. ... Is the District doing ANYTHING to evaluate the outcome of this new re-registration process -- and whether there might be some less burdensome way of achieving the same ends?"

Parents have suggested a range of possible improvements to the process.

  • The acceptance of signed documents submitted by mail, fax or online
  • The option to connect the district directly with landlords to confirm lease status, if paperwork is not readily available
  • A home visit (by request) in lieu of certain documentation
  • A broader range of accepted documentation
  • The placement of district staff at individual schools (on a rotating basis) to handle re-registration

Are there changes you'd like to see in the enrollment verification process? Please share your ideas in the comments. Let us know how the 2012 process unfolds.

Click "Keep me posted" for an email alert when we cover school enrollment and residency issues in Albany.

If there's something in this article you think  , or if something else is amiss, call editor Emilie Raguso at 510-459-8325 or email her at albany@patch.com.

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here

The views expressed in this post are the author's own. Want to post on Patch?