Locking up mom

Even though the stated intent of the founders of the modern compulsory government schools — men like John Dewey and Horace Mann — was to wrest children away from their parents at the earliest possible age so as to remove them from the “foreign and un-American” influences of the lower-class home, what’s the most loudly repeated excuse, today, for the failure of these schools?

Why, the fact that parents, especially low-income parents, don’t cooperate and support the schools — they don’t force the kids to do their homework; they don’t “take enough interest” in their kids’ education, etc.

We certainly know what would happen if parents refused to send their kids to school, at all. In most states, unless you provide some evidence that your child is being “properly” tutored at home or in a private school, you can have your children taken away for that. It’s a crime.

So what happens when poor, black moms do precisely what everyone says they should — show lots of concern, in fact move heaven and earth in order to get their kids to attend the best public school available?

If they’re “the wrong kind” of parents, our local school boards respond by arresting them and charging them with the criminal offense of “larceny,” of course.

Back in January, I reported the case of Kelly Williams-Bolar, an Ohio mother of two who was sentenced to 10 days in jail and placed on three years probation for sending her kids to school in a district in which they did not live — “stealing” the cost of their schooling.

Williams-Bolar is black. She was convicted of registering her two girls as living with the kids’ grandfather so she could drive them daily — at her own expense — to attend better schools in nearby Copley township, instead of condemning them to the crummier schools which such black children “are supposed” to attend, closer to the Akron housing projects where they live.

Need we ask how many illegal aliens have been jailed in this country for sending their kids to our superior (at least, formerly superior) tax-funded schools, instead of the lesser facilities available back in the one and only school district where they can claim legal residence — in Mexico, Guatemala, or wherever?

Meantime, here comes the next one:

Tanya McDowell, a 33-year-old homeless single mom who sleeps on a friend’s couch in nearby Bridgeport when it’s available, but otherwise lives in her van — and yes, she’s black — was due in court in Norwalk, Conn., Wednesday, accused of “stealing” $15,686 worth of education for her son.

The 6-year-old boy was enrolled at Norwalk’s Brookside Elementary School between January and McDowell’s April 14 arrest.

One wonders if it might not be possible to get 15 weeks of quality tutoring for less than $15,686, even in high-cost Connecticut. (If McDowell were charged based on what the schooling was WORTH, in other words, rather than what it cost taxpayers, one wonders if this would still be “grand larceny.”)

The self-declared homeless woman is charged with felony larceny for allegedly using her baby sitter’s address to enroll her boy in the better quality Norwalk schools.

The charge can carry a prison sentence of up to 20 years — equivalent to what Connecticut gives murderers.

Ms. McDowell’s attorney contends 26 other families have also purposely enrolled their children in Norwalk schools under wrong addresses — but only McDowell was arrested.

Why would that be?

Sheila Mosby, a former Norwalk school board member, can’t think of a single instance of Norwalk ever treating anyone else like this, reports Connecticut Post Columnist MariAn Gail Brown.

“It’s not uncommon for someone to use a baby sitter’s address to get their child into a different school,” Mosby says. “There are a number of cases like that.”

Yet none of the parents in those 26 other cases have been arrested on a felony charge.

“The ordinary way schools handle such suspicions is to notify parents in writing that they are suspected of fraudulently enrolling their children and allow them to defend their action either in writing or at an administrative hearing,” columnist Brown reports.

“This is not a poor, picked-upon homeless person,” responds Norwalk Mayor Richard Moccia. “This is an ex-con and somehow the city of Norwalk is made into the ogre in this. She has a checkered past at best.”

McDowell was arrested in November for marijuana possession and previously served an 18-month prison term for robbery and weapons charges.

I won’t make any excuses for robbery, though it doesn’t take much for a poor, black person to draw a “weapons charge” in “have-a-gun, go-to-jail” Southern New England.

But the question was whether we want low-income parents to show more concern about the quality of schooling their kids get, and how we’re going to reward them if they do.

In a country where most folks can recite stories about star athletes “going to live” at the home of an aunt or uncle so they could play on a championship high-school team, somehow “jail” was not the first answer that came to mind.

One Comment to “Locking up mom”

  1. liberranter Says:

    was convicted of registering her two girls as living with the kids’ grandfather so she could drive them daily — at her own expense — to attend better schools in nearby Copley township, instead of condemning them to the crummier schools which such black children “are supposed” to attend, closer to the Akron housing projects where they live.

    [Tanya McDowell, t]he self-declared homeless woman is charged with felony larceny for allegedly using her baby sitter’s address to enroll her boy in the better quality Norwalk schools.

    While these womens’ motivations were certainly laudable, what they did, in practice, was akin to breaking their children out of Alcatraz in order to send them to Leavenworth: they traded one prison for another.

    Not only does this story serve as a reminder of the absurd lengths to which the keepers of our bizarro universe will go in order to remind us of our inferior status (especially if were are of the “wrong” demographic background), it also tells us that the concept of liberty is still alien to far too many people. Clearly these two unfortunate women never had anyone explain to them just how inexpensive it is (at least in terms of money) and how few resources it really takes to educate their children in the basics, a task that doesn’t require a government indoctrination camp –or even professional “educators”– at all.

    Needless to say, I hope both of these women manage to buck the system and overturn any wrongful convictions sustained as a result of their victimization by the “justice” [sic] system.