Laurene Heybach is the director of CCH's Law Project.  Along with providing many other vital legal services to homeless people, the Law Project has done a lot of work to protect the educational rights of homeless youths.  

This work often involves CCH lawyers using the courts as a last resort to ensure that public school do not wrongfully turn away homeless students.  (You can read more about the Law Project's work with homeless students here.)

In the March 9th edition of The SouthtownStar, Ms. Heybach draws on her experiences and comments on schools forcing families into court for residency disputes.

You can read Ms. Heybach's letter below, or access it on The SouthtownStar's website here.

Courtroom not the place to determine school matters

In its Feb. 24 issue, the SouthtownStar published a letter from a former school residency hearing officer (Wahl, "Boy belongs in school - but where?"). The author attempts to quell outrage at the disenrollment of a first-grade boy by Homewood School District 153. The letter implies that schools use a careful evaluation process and fair hearing mechanism to even-handedly decide residency issues. It concludes by suggesting that the resolution for the Homewood first-grader rightly belongs in a court of law where it now sits.

I'm an attorney who often helps children wrongfully turned away from school. I don't know Mr. Wahl, but I do know there is nothing fair to families in the treatment of residency disputes by several suburban school districts.

And I have to shake my head at the idea that - in the 21st century - educators force families into legal proceedings, the hiring of attorneys at the families' expense and courtroom battles to keep a child out of school. How does that benefit the people of Illinois? The child?

Remarkably, districts spend precious school monies on lawyers, law firms and private eyes leaving one to wonder whether tutoring and homework support might not be a better use of our tax dollars. Superintendents and principals snoop at people's homes. Private detectives flash family photos to strangers and do video stake-outs of Illinois families. To what end? One district boasted to my staff that 400 families were then under "investigation" for residency.

In the Homewood first-grader case (and others), districts have had the temerity to conduct hearings in which the hearing officer is an attorney representing the school district. Not the usual idea of fair.

When legislative efforts have been undertaken to require truly fair and impartial hearing officers, the school districts' lobbyist, School Management Alliance, vigorously has opposed it. So, let's not kid ourselves about the process. Outrage is the right response. Our families deserve better treatment than this!

Finally, as to Mr. Wahl's remark that families have no right under the Illinois School Code to make their outrage known in the media and to their elected representatives to "intimidate the local school board," I must say I'm surprised. They do have that right.

Laurene M. Heybach

Director of the Law Project

Chicago Coalition for the Homeless