Mom pleads not guilty over school enrollment

By Stephanie Reitz Associated Press | Last updated: May 8, 2011 - 6:58:14 PM

Tanya McDowell, right, stands during her arraignment on larceny charges in Norwalk, Conn., Superior Court, April 27 with her attorney Darnell Crosland. Photo AP/Wide World Photos

NORWALK, Connecticut - A homeless, single mother who lives in her van pleaded not guilty recently to stealing nearly $16,000 worth of education for her son by enrolling the kindergartener in her babysitter’s school district.

Tanya McDowell, 33, was arraigned in Norwalk, where she was arrested April 14 on felony charges of committing and attempting to commit first-degree larceny.

Prosecutors say Ms. McDowell used her babysitter’s address to enroll her son in Norwalk schools in the fall but should have registered the boy in nearby Bridgeport, a signifi cantly poorer urban district and the location of her last permanent address.

Officials call it the fi rst known case of its type in Connecticut, although similar confl icts have played out elsewhere in the U.S. as districts try to ensure their scarce local tax dollars are used for local students.

“He’s only 5-years-old and it’s hard like to explain to a 5-year-old kid, you know, ‘You got kicked out because we don’t have a steady address yet,’ ” said Ms. McDowell, an unemployed cook.

Ms. McDowell, who is Black, has drawn the support of civil rights leaders and parents’ groups and is being represented by a lawyer provided by the Connecticut chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. She faces up to 20 years in prison and up to $15,000 in fi nes if convicted of the felony larceny charge.

She said before April 27 arraignment that her bewildered son, A.J., repeatedly asked why he was kicked out of his school. The boy was removed from Norwalk’s Brookside Elementary School in January and now lives with relatives in Bridgeport, where he attends kindergarten.

“He’s very curious in regards to it because he thinks I stole Brookside away from him, like I took it away from him,” said Ms. McDowell, who has a criminal record and faces pending drug charges in the same court handling the enrollment case.

Several parents picking up children at the school on the afternoon of April 27 expressed support for Ms. McDowell.

“If they were going to do it, they should have at least waited until the end of the school year if he was settled in and doing well here,” said Thomas Soltes, who was picking up his granddaughter. “It isn’t the child’s fault and he shouldn’t be penalized.”

Connecticut students can only attend public schools in the municipality where their parents or guardians reside, unless they go to a magnet school, charter schools or another district under a desegregation plan.

About 2,700 children in Connecticut public schools were listed last year as homeless, including many in temporary foster care or going through other custody or residency transitions.

Ms. McDowell’s case is not America’s first. Last year, a Black single mother from Ohio was convicted of a felony for using her father’s address to enroll her children in a suburban district rather than the larger, underperforming Akron district.

Ms. McDowell would not comment on the specifi cs of her case, but she has said that she did not believe she was doing anything wrong when she enrolled her son in Norwalk.

She said she splits her time between a Norwalk shelter and her van, occasionally sleeping at a friend’s Bridgeport apartment. Her son went to the babysitter’s Norwalk apartment every day after school, she said.

Bridgeport’s heavily urban school district is about twice the size of Norwalk’s, though both sit within Connecticut’s wealthy Fairfield County. Bridgeport is signifi cantly poorer: State fi gures show 95 percent of Bridgeport’s students qualify for free or reduced-lunch meals because of their family incomes, compared with less than one of every three Norwalk students. Norwalk also has significantly lower dropout rates and higher test scores.

Norwalk offi cials have said there is far more to the story than a downtrodden single mother seeking a better education for her son.

Authorities say her most recent permanent address was in Bridgeport, making that his home district. They say instead of following proper procedures, Ms. McDowell lied to use the address of the babysitter and, according to court records, wrote on the enrollment affi davit that the baby sitter was her son’s legal guardian.

The babysitter has been evicted from her public housing unit, but has not been criminally charged.

Norwalk Mayor Richard Moccia told the Hartford Courant that the district never would have rejected a homeless student and offers extensive services for those children, but that parents must follow proper procedures.

He said he is upset at how Norwalk has been portrayed and that Ms. McDowell “has somehow become a heroine (while) the city and the prosecutor’s offi ce has become the devil incarnate.”

Ms. McDowell is scheduled to return to court May 11 for the school enrollment case. She will also appear before a judge that day on the unrelated case in which she was charged last November with possessing 62 small bags of marijuana and 14 of crack cocaine.

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