HUDSON COUNTY -- According to an article in the Record newspapers today, an unidentified family living in Hudson County enrolled its children in schools in nearby Rutherford even though they lived in Hudson County.
Once the Rutherford schools did an investigation, they determined that the Hudson family owes them a whopping $70,000 in tuition!
The paper reports: "The $70,000 amount has been placed as a lien on the parents’ property. This means they won’t be able to sell their house without paying off the money to Rutherford first."
The story does not say which Hudson County town the parents live in, or why they chose to educate their children in Rutherford instead of their own district.
It notes, "Sometimes the child’s parents either own property in Rutherford but don’t live there but they use the property as a cover to send their kids to a nearby school. She said there have even been cases where parents living in other towns tried to enroll their kids in Rutherford simply because it was on their way to work and convenient to drop them off there."
Please explain.
Hoboken should go after the money if it's that much. That's a huge taxpayer rip off. The secondary question should be is how expensive is it to collect the money?
It's much easier to have a school that is only services Hoboken kids ie fewer teachers, fewer buildings, fewer administrators and support staff, then to spend them money on the wrong kids and then try to re-coup it.
Other districts employ a full time investigator at around $80,000 a year all he/she has to do is find 3-4 students each year and it pays for itself.
Hoboken found 12 already.
A bigger question, how bad are Hudson's schools if these parents chose Rutherford instead?
What would you do with that? Expose them so that any efforts not to pay it are foiled?