Touchy topic.

Illegal immigration is getting a lot of attention in both national and local politics. The city of Farmers Branch embarrassed itself even talking about it. So I anticipate some outrage with this next topic. But we need to face reality squarely and, as Dr Lewis always says, Get the Facts.

Texas State Law and the Lancaster ISD enrollment policy are conflicted about legal residency and citizenship. On the one hand, local policy dictates:


DOCUMENTATION
If a parent or other person with legal control of a child enrolls the child in a District school, the parent or other person, or the school district in which the child most recently attended school, shall furnish to the District all of the following:
The child's birth certificate, or another document suitable as proof of the child's identity as defined by the Commissioner of Education in the Student Attendance Accounting Handbook;

and, from that handbook

Student Requirements include the following:
Social Security Card,
Birth Certificate
...
Lancaster ISD will prosecute any parent who falsifies document for purposes of attending LISD.

On the other hand, the SAME policy advices:

Denying enrollment to children who are not legally admitted into the United States violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Plyler v. Doe, 457 U.S. 202 (1982)

So, the problem is, do students attending LISD schools who are not legally resident or citizens of the United States and Texas "count" toward the Average Daily Attendance?

If district average attendance is about 6000 students and even 1% of these students are challenged by the TEA for legal residency, how much money does the district lose?

Is the district building any allowance whatever into their annual budgets for the possibilty that their ADA numbers might be so challenged?

Can they then support their maintenance and operations budget, which depends so heavily on state funding based on that ADA, if the ADA turned out to be wrong?

And if they ARE worried about it, would they be upfront about the problem or bury the deficit in the bond programs Interest and Sinking fund budget?

Something to think about as you try to Get the Facts.