As a panel on NBC's Education Nation prepares to discuss the inequality in education quality from Zip code to Zip code, it seems fitting to link to a recent New York Times interview with Kelley Williams-Bolar, the Akron, Ohio, mother jailed after falsifying documents so that she could enroll her daughters in a school district outside her attendance zone.
Some excerpts:
My home had been broken into in 2006. I decided to enroll my kids using my dad’s address ... He helps raise them ... Everything was fine — at least I thought it was — until the second year. I was very concerned about their safety. I didn’t want them at home by themselves. I was in school. I worked long hours at the university. I wasn’t comfortable with them being that independent ... I did not have an opinion if the schools were at the level they should be or not. That’s not why I did what I did. People do it all the time. My grandparents raised me, so I didn’t think it was a problem because I didn’t give them a fake address or anything like that. Their grandfather is involved in raising them ...
... I never thought I would be prosecuted for it. They said that the education had been stolen.
