In nearly half the states in the country, parents risk criminal prosecution — and jail time — if they use a false address to get their children into a better school, a new report shows.

Georgia is one of them, something Valencia Stovall, a former state legislator, tried to change in 2020.

She sponsored a bill that would have allowed a parent to use an address outside their attendance zone as long as the person living there gave permission. The legislation also would have exempted such parents from fraud or forgery charges.

“No parent wants to drive an hour and a half in traffic to get their child in another school,” said Stovall, a Democrat who supports school choice. “They are thinking about the future of their children, and they know education is the key.”

The bill didn’t pass, and to date, only Connecticut has decriminalized what the report — published Tuesday by nonprofits Available for All and Bellwether — calls “address sharing.”

In a post-pandemic era where more parents are shopping around for schools that better suit their children’s needs, the authors hope other states follow Connecticut’s lead. According to co-author Tim DeRoche, who has previously written about exclusionary attendance zones, the issue falls under the radar because it’s more common for districts to “quietly kick the kids out of schools, using the threat of prosecution.”

When districts do involve law enforcement, criminal charges and stiff fines often land on the backs of Black, Hispanic and low-income families, he said. The report points to a 2018 public radio investigation in Philadelphia where across 20 districts, families questioned about their residency or disenrolled from schools were disproportionately nonwhite.

Read the full article about using a false address for school by Linda Jacobson at The 74.