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Verifying Hardships Stymies Schools

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By MARILYN BROWN, The Tampa Tribune

Published: January 20, 2008

Updated: 01/20/2008 12:13 am

TAMPA - Hillsborough County school officials do little if anything to verify claims of hardships submitted by parents wanting to enroll their children in crowded schools.

With more than 6,000 applications a year submitted and one man to review and approve them, it's not possible, officials said.

Other than a doctor's letter, military records or a court order, the district relies on signed applications from parents or guardians.

"They sign a little statement down at the bottom that says that the statements are true," said Steve Ayers, the district's community and parent relations director.

"You can't go by and verify all of these things," Ayers said. "It's too time-consuming."

Few people report violations of the district's special assignment policy, Ayers said, but when they do, "I'm not a detective agency, but I will look into it."

Still, "I can't recall the last time I checked on one," he said. "It's infrequent."

The district's special assignment process came to the attention of parents two weeks ago when The Tampa Tribune reported that Tony Dungy's son, Eric, started attending Plant High School in South Tampa this month. He said he is living at his family's home in Avila in northwest Hillsborough County.

Special attendance permits are supposed to be approved only for hardships relating to a medical issue, a court order, military transition or being the child of a district employee at the requested school.

District officials won't say what hardship qualifies Dungy for a special attendance permit, citing student confidentiality. Because his father, Tony, is coach of the Indianapolis Colts and former coach of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, some allege the special assignment is favoritism.

Eric Dungy is a sophomore wide receiver on Plant's football team, one of the few teams in the district that more often passes the ball instead of running it.

For decades, Hillsborough's special assignment option has allowed thousands of families a year to enroll their children in schools outside the assigned boundaries. Some families circumvent that option and simply give false addresses to enroll in a school they want.

Some Surprising Results

Checking up can yield surprising results.

Bob Heilmann, principal at Riverview High, remembers one address on the electric bill submitted as proof of residence that looked suspicious. He drove by the address and found a storage shed with an electric line running to it.

Tracking down such violations has not been a priority.

"How involved do you want to be?" Heilmann asked. "How much time do you have?"

Still, he said, "I would like to reward the people who accept the 'no' and stick with it. Then there are those who won't accept it and try to circumvent it by cheating."

Before the 2006-07 school year, parents were required to take the application to the school they wanted their child to attend to have the principal initial it.

That changed when the district went to an online application and it was no longer practical to route applications through principals, said Bill Person, general director of student planning, placement and support programs.

Now, principals may not even know why a special assignment has been approved.

"At Gaither, we always made a copy" of the application, said Brenda Grasso, the high school's principal. "Now we usually don't see them unless a parent comes by to show us."

Some parents do call Grasso when they are turned down by the district and ask whether there is anything she can do, she said.

"I will call and inquire. I'm told, 'Gaither is at 110 percent'" capacity, she said. The district does not share the details of the hardship with her, she said.

Of the district's 25 high schools, Gaither had the most special attendance requests last year, 150. Of those, 49 were approved.

Special assignment is one option on the online school choice application. Parents can submit their request online or print it out and fax or mail it in. Documentation is sent in separately.

For an explanation as to why they are turned down, parents must call Ayers.

That's what Lissa Davenport said she did about a week ago when she hadn't heard back about her December request for a special assignment for her 9-year-old son to attend Limona Elementary in Brandon. She requested it under "military transition" and included her husband's order for deployment to Iraq.

Parents may get a transfer to any school with room if they provide their own transportation. Limona, like many others, is over capacity, requiring a special assignment for students not in that boundary.

Davenport wants her son, Clayton, to return to Limona where he was on a special assignment for three years before a district recruitment letter drew her to the Rampello Downtown Partnership School. Her husband, who worked at Tampa International Airport, is no longer able to pick him up, so Clayton is in after-school care costing $48 a week. His grandmother could pick him up if he was in Brandon, Davenport said.

The district offered Davenport a return to her assigned school - Yates - which is also over capacity, but her son is familiar with Limona, Davenport said. "I don't want to uproot him again."

Is that a hardship? The district said no.

"I just wanted to get him back home," Davenport said. "It's already a financial hardship with my husband deployed. I don't have anything against the Dungys. If I had a child with athletic ability, I would want him to go to the school where he could play."

But, she said, "I really wonder how they make their decisions."

In the past, child care issues and wanting to take a course not offered at the assigned high school were major reasons students were allowed to switch schools.

More than 18,000 permits were issued some years because families had to reapply each year.

That's no longer the case. Also changed is that a student granted special assignment can remain in that school until he or she moves on to middle or high school or graduates.

The student policy manual says students on special assignment may lose that privilege if they have too many misconduct, absentee, tardy or attendance referrals, or if parents repeatedly fail to pick them up from school on time.

Verifying Addresses

Falsifying the application is also reason for removal from the school.

Parents who falsify an address or lie about who their child lives with also can lose special attendance permits, Ayers said.

A family may own property in the district, but the child has to reside there with a parent or guardian to qualify, he said.

Checking on that is cumbersome. On a request from a principal or from Ayers, district campus security officers check addresses on their patrols, said Dave Friedberg, the district's campus security chief.

Last year, officers checked on 120 address verifications, but Friedberg had no report of results, he said. Officers send reports back to whoever requested them, he said.

Ayers said the district does not keep records on how many students lose special permits.

The Effect Of Class Caps

Next year, officials said, it will take a catastrophic hardship to get a special assignment to a crowded school because the state's class-size amendment must be fully implemented.

The number of students in nearly every classroom will be capped, meaning even late-registering students who live in a school's boundary may have to enroll in another school.

How that will play out with Hillsborough's special assignment process is a question.

With fewer slots and details of why assignments were granted or denied not public, more parents may be questioning the criteria.

A return to appeals being heard by a district committee, which ended in 2004, comes in February.

"Because it will be a closed hearing, parents may feel more comfortable discussing personal situation and hardships," Person said.

The school board, now the only appeal possible, will become a third level for an appeal. But that is done in a public meeting.

From January 2007 through December, there were 6,140 applications for special attendance permits, 2,750 of which were approved. Numbers of approvals should decrease, but the difficulty of verifying information will remain, officials said.

"I have a faith in people doing what they're supposed to be doing," Ayers said. "My responsibility is not to find people doing the wrong thing. My responsibility is to help people and their children."

Reporter Marilyn Brown can be reached at (813) 259-8069 or mbrown@tampatrib.com.

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