A north suburban Lincolnwood family improperly sent its two kids to a Chicago Public Schools selective enrollment elementary school for six years.
Then, once it was time for high school, the family moved into the city but lied about living in a poorer neighborhood to boost the children’s chances of getting into a selective enrollment high school.
That’s according to an investigation done by the CPS Inspector General’s office, which detailed the findings in its annual report released Tuesday.
From May 2014 until August 2020, the family violated CPS’s student residency requirements by enrolling their kids at Decatur Classical Elementary in West Rogers Park, investigators found. The school sits a few blocks from neighboring suburb Lincolnwood, where the family lived.
The parents owned several residential properties in Chicago through their real estate company and used those city addresses in CPS enrollment materials to lie about where they lived, the IG’s office said.
During the investigation, the parents denied living in Lincolnwood, the report said. First, they said the Lincolnwood address was used as an office for their real estate company, then they said that address was a home used by elderly relatives.
The family eventually moved to “a relatively affluent part of Chicago,” the inspector general said, but “boosted their children’s chances of being admitted to a selective enrollment school by lying about where they lived in the city.”
Kids get into selective enrollment schools based on their academic performance and their socioeconomic status, which is grouped into four tiers based on where they live.
When they moved into Chicago, the family moved to a neighborhood that’s in the highest income tier but submitted paperwork claiming they lived in the lowest income tier, the IG found.
That meant one of their kids got into Whitney Young Academic Center despite having academic credentials that wouldn’t have met the threshold for her correct socioeconomic tier, the report said. And even after investigators interviewed the parents, they kept lying on their selective enrollment applications.
In March 2022, their other child was admitted to Northside College Prep despite scoring below the academic threshold for students in their correct socioeconomic tier, the IG said.
The watchdog office recommended CPS try to recoup $138,962 in nonresident tuition from the parents for the years the kids were enrolled at Decatur while living in Lincolnwood, and to permanently ban the kids from CPS selective enrollment schools.
The nonresidency tuition rate varies slightly from year to year. Last school year it was $18,954.
The children were unenrolled for the start of this school year, and CPS told the IG’s office that it reached a settlement with the parents for the tuition they owed.
Nader Issa covers education for the Chicago Sun-Times.
Sarah Karp covers education for WBEZ. Follow her on X @WBEZeducation and @sskedreporter.
