Maybe there was a tiny bit of extra money spent in the educational process, but state and federal funding would be essentially the same for each school in which these kids might attend, right? Where is the cause to have over a hundred families (correct me if I heard that wrong) investigated using taxpayer money? And who wins? Is this just a boondoggle with a handy excuse, desire for racial segregation, or something else? An attack on school choice? Or is my intuition wrong and the money spent will be recovered in decreased “fraud”?

Beyond that, it is not right to force someone to receive goods. Compulsory schooling is morally bankrupt and close to useless, even in the best school districts.

Ah, the weird schizophrenia of statism.

I cannot believe that a bunch of libertarians accept the idea that people who do not contribute to a system are entitled to benefits from that system.

It’s not entitlement. It’s just the tiniest feeling of joy at seeing someone throw a small wrench into your system of thievery.

I suppose food and shelter should also be completely socialized, eh? After all, we wouldn’t want people with means to get better food and houses.

Robbing a robber is no real crime. The only shame here is that she was caught.

Those who believe it is not right to force someone to pay for goods they do not receive should stop helping to try to keep the spinning plate of our economic system balanced for just one more day. Spend your time figuring how to get OFF the plate (it can be done!) and leave the ‘taxers’ to it.

The practical method for the mom in this case would have been to take full responsibility for the education of her children and leave the school system to fend for itself.

My town’s school system rocks because of the commitment of the community.

I seriously doubt that. Rather, I think your town’s school system rocks because your town is full of affluent people. This affluence produces the money for a small subsection of your town to lobby for spending it on schools.

Bob? Don’t you think that our community’s decision to levy additional taxes on ourselves shows a commitment from the community?

Verdon at #41

I sure hope your kid is getting a better education in regards to reading comprehension that [sic] you did. The grandfather of the kids lived in the school district.

Umm, Verdon, that’s the grandfather, not the student. If the community wanted grandparents to satisfy residency requirements, it could easily do so, but it did not. I wonder why the community did not do this? Hmm, average family has 2.5 children. So, average grandfather has 6.25 grandchildren. Do you see the problem yet? What about a second cousin twice removed?

I cannot believe that a bunch of libertarians accept the idea that people who do not contribute to a system are entitled to benefits from that system.

”
I live in Copley and PAY my property tax sohe kids of Copley can go to school. NOT GHETTO TRASH. I don’t care if she thinks she was doing best for her kids. She stole from every person in Copley that pays taxes. I do …not pay my taxes for her kids to go to school and they have no right going to school there

SHE NEEDS TO TO TO JAIL FOR A WHILE. GIVE HER THE MAX TERM!! What a crook and go back to Akron, oh wait jail!”

Stay classy, Ohio. Stay classy.

Some of us think the case in question is one of overprosecution of what ought to be considered a very minor offense. Others think this is a case of extreme government coercion vis a vis public school districting enforced by statist district attorneys.

If you’re a minarchist, I can see how you’re outraged by the prosecution, but I think you need to admit that in the world you wish for, there also wouldn’t be the “good” school district for these kids to go to, either.

If you’re more federalist, I’m not sure how you square the circle of championing more local/state control of schools with the expectation of free movement among schools as some kind of fundamental right. Allowing parents to move students around like that requires a top-down management at higher levels (state or even federal) to make decisions on allocating resources to match up to where students will actually go which inevitably requires that the most critical decisions are no longer made locally. You’re saying that the citizens of a city/town don’t have the right to local determination!

Finally, the whole relative issue is a poor excuse. Obviously her father does not deserve any prosecution in my mind, but the idea that you’re owed the services of a locality because a relative does live there is silly. If you want your kids to go to those schools move there (swap houses with your dad!), establish co-guardianship or pay for private schools you do want your kids to go to.

I believe some kind of public education is essential for a post-industrial society, and as such its cost should partially be shared, partially, by society. It shocks me that people who buy into the idea of public schools could be so fierce in their vilification of a women who was trying to use public goods to educate her children. You want to bitch about how she didn’t pay into the system, then you need to start writing checks to all the single people and childless couples who pay into your kids education. Either put up or shut up.

What you should be asking is: if the disparity in the quality of schools is so great why isn’t the state government working to correct that instead of punishing a women trying to get her kids through the de facto segregation of the system? The states priorities have been seriously misplaced, and regardless of whatever arbitrary laws are written or enforced, what happened in this case is wrong on many levels.

maybe cooperation is the foundation of evolution and those are the groups that survived.

I don’t think she understands the nature of the State. What a strange person.

I gather there’s pretty good evidence that a lot of the difference in school performance, both inside the US and between nations, has to do with student quality. That is:

a. Put all the rich kids in school A and the poor kids in school B, and A looks like a much better-run school than B, even if they’re funded and staffed in the same way.

b. Put all the white and Asian kids in school A and all the black and hispanic kids in school B, and again, A looks like a much better school.

c. Put all the kids whose parents went to college in school A and the other kids in school B, and A will look like a much better school than B.

And so on. In the modern US, it’s rightly not acceptable to segregate kids by race. And yet, by the mechanism of higher house prices in neighborhoods with better schools, we absolutely do segregate kids by parental income, which tracks pretty well with race (whites tend to be richer than blacks), and also accounts for a lot of potential problems in your students’ environments (the single mom with three jobs who doesn’t speak English probably doesn’t make enough to live in a good school district, so her inability to help with her kids’ homework won’t bring down the test scores).