Many angry parents say they're footing the bill to educate Tijuana kids in U.S. schools, but hard-line stance may not reflect reality

By Janine Zúñiga
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

On any given weekday morning, a steady flow of school-age children can be seen toting backpacks north across the Mexico border, where most hop aboard the trolley in San Ysidro.

Some say they attend private schools, such as Our Lady of Peace in Normal Heights or Marian High in Nestor. Others, however, say they go to public high schools in the South Bay, including Castle Park, Southwest, Mar Vista and Eastlake.

It's a situation that infuriates many parents, especially those in the booming east Chula Vista area.

They loudly complain that these children in public schools are violating rules requiring them to live in the district. It's unfair, the parents say, that their taxes help educate kids who live in Tijuana but who crowd their children's classrooms.

No one disputes that children cross the border to attend public and private schools. But because no one tracks students coming into the United States, it's impossible to know how much they affect public schools.

Simply counting border crossers, however, doesn't tell the whole story.

Some students attend private school; others have homes on both sides of the border. Some cross for the night; still others have a parent in both countries.

"When you live on a border like this, you have to deal with this issue," said Andrea Skorepa, executive director of Casa Familiar, a social services agency in San Ysidro. "It's a fluid line. This has gone on and will continue to go on."

Although schools in other border states have long dealt with nonresident border-crossers, no other state has an urban area the size of the U.S.-Mexico border in California, with an estimated population of 5 million.

Officials at other school districts in San Diego County say residency questions come up, but that they're generally not border-related.

Officials with the Poway Unified School District and San Diego city schools, for example, say the issue more often concerns students living in one district and attending school in another.

In east Chula Vista, tens of thousands of new residents live in what was once vast open space east of Interstate 805.

Buyers have snapped up new homes at a phenomenal pace, adding more students than schools can handle. New homeowners have blamed crowded campuses on city officials, builders, school administrators and, increasingly, on students coming from Mexico.

Immigration figures show that about 140,000 people cross daily into the United States from Mexico at the San Ysidro Port of Entry, the busiest land border crossing in the world.

Vince Bond, a spokesman for the U.S. Bureau of Customs and Border Protection, said most of the children who come across from Mexico say they are U.S. citizens.

"They are legally entitled to cross the border," Bond said. "They make a verbal declaration, but are sometimes asked for a passport or proof of citizenship. A verbal declaration is within the law."

U.S. citizenship does not guarantee attendance at a particular public school. That determination is where an immigration official's job ends and a school district's residency policy begins, Bond said.

Federal law prohibits school districts from asking students or parents about their legal status when they enroll in school.

State law requires school administrators to verify that students live in the district. If they find out that students live outside the country, schools must collect tuition.

On a recent afternoon, some youngsters at the San Ysidro Port of Entry admitted that they attend U.S. schools but live in Tijuana.

Although they agreed to be interviewed, the children asked that their full names not be used for fear they would be expelled or draw attention to their friends.

Victor, a sixth-grader at a South County elementary school, and his sister, a third-grader, said they live in Mexico near the Otay Mesa border crossing and use a relative's address to skirt residency requirements.

When asked why they cross every day, Victor, who wants to be a scientist when he grows up, said he likes U.S. public schools better than those in Mexico.

Another boy walked with a group of boisterous students who were wearing Navy blue pants, Navy blue sweaters with gold lettering and white shirts, the school uniform colors of Mar Vista Middle School in Egger Highlands.

The boy said he and his friends are far from alone in living in Mexico and going to school in Chula Vista.

"I would guess that one-quarter of the school is from Tijuana," he said.

Private grousing

Parents in the South Bay say such border-crossing is the norm.

Many are quick to recall an East County case that drew national attention 10 years ago when hundreds of students were videotaped crossing at Tecate and boarding Mountain Empire School District buses, which were waiting for them at the border.

Although many parents concede the situation today is not as egregious as the Mountain Empire case, they complain that students from Tijuana use phony addresses or those of relatives when registering for local schools.

They say that teachers in their children's schools often speak Spanish and allow some homework assignments to be written in Spanish to accommodate Tijuana students who don't speak or write English.

More than a few parents pointed to a drop in attendance immediately after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks as proof that students are coming from Mexico. About 450 more students than usual were absent from Sweetwater schools the day after the attacks, and some parents say heightened border security caused many absences.

It is not easy to prove such a connection, however.

There is no way to know, for example, how many of those absent students were U.S. residents kept home by concerned parents. In addition, the attendance rate at Sweetwater was higher on Sept. 12, 2001, than on the same day a year later.

Few parents are willing to publicly voice their concerns on the issue.

No names, please

The San Diego Union-Tribune  received dozens of calls and e-mails in response to articles on Chula Vista's rapid growth and its effect on schools.

Those readers blamed students from Mexico for the crowded schools, but most refused to allow their names to be published, saying they feared being labeled xenophobic or racist.

Nearly all made the same claims.

They said the children from Mexico are easy to spot, that they are the ones covertly dropped off a few blocks from campus or who ride in cars with Baja California plates. Some said the students dress differently than those from the United States and speak Spanish.

One parent said he has followed students who leave U.S. schools and cross the border.

When pressed, these parents acknowledge that many people all over the county drop off students away from crowded school parking lots, and that riding in a car registered in Baja California does not prove a student is not from the district.

They also admit that many district residents speak Spanish as a primary language and that students heading south across the border after school might have a valid reason for doing so.

One parent, Francisco Corral, said he agreed to attach his name to his comments because the issue is too big to ignore.

"Nobody wants to touch this subject, to be labeled racist," said Corral, who has two children in Chula Vista schools. "That's not the issue. It's just that right now we're having a crisis. There's not enough money for people living in California to attend schools. We certainly don't have the money to pay for students attending from outside the district."

Enforcing the rules

Corral and others blame Tijuana government officials for not providing better schools for their citizens, and San Diego County school officials for not more strictly enforcing residency requirements.

Many parents suspect that local school districts, which receive state money every day a student shows up, are reluctant to verify students' residency because they could lose money.

Officials at Sweetwater, which oversees 39,000 students in its 24 middle and high schools in South County, say they have a tough residency policy.

Lillian Leopold, a district spokeswoman, said parents are required to provide proof of residency every year.

Residents who share homes with other families – a growing phenomenon in tight housing markets – must provide additional documentation. She said the district investigates any application that looks suspicious, as well as tips it receives or mail that is returned.

Since July, the district has conducted 300 home visits and kicked out 30 students who were in violation of residency requirements, Leopold said.

"How much more aggressive can the district be?" she asked. "We're not a police state. We're here to educate. We do our best to guard taxpayers' money, but our primary mission is to educate students and yet we are diligent in investigating residency."

Leopold said the $5,361 per student the district receives annually does not stop it from investigating cases. This year, the district has three students from Mexico who pay Sweetwater's $6,408 tuition, she said.

John Pierce, whose son attends Hilltop High in Chula Vista, said he can't believe Sweetwater's policy is all that strict.

"You must provide proof of the residence you live in by providing a utility bill," Pierce said, "but nobody asks if you can prove who you are."

He said he offered his driver license when recently registering his son and that the woman handling the paperwork said she didn't want to see it, that she was tired of getting yelled at.

"The whole policy is a big joke," Pierce said. "They're wasting my time. I had to leave work early, come down, show this vital piece of information. But if they're not even checking you are who you say you are, what's the use?"

School districts still feel the sting of the Mountain Empire case.

Eventually, more than 300 students were expelled for failing to prove residency. Mountain Empire was fined $300,000 by the state and saw a 15 percent drop in enrollment.

Mountain Empire Superintendent Patrick Judd said the potential for fraud always exists in border towns. But the district is diligent in following up on complaints, tips and inconsistencies, he said.

"We do not believe we have a problem any longer," Judd said. "Could there be some (nonresident students) in our system? Yes. But we're trying to find them."

Policies altered

The incident caused the district to overhaul its student residency policies and hire someone whose sole job is to make sure they're enforced.
Meanwhile, a task force of Chula Vista residents that studied growth issues last year recommended tightening residency requirements at the schools by requiring more than one form of identification bearing a home address.

Sweetwater Assistant Superintendent Larry Perondi said the district is considering requiring a driver license, as the task force suggested. Any change would ultimately need to be made by the board of trustees.

Adrian, a 17-year-old junior at a Chula Vista high school who crossed the border one recent morning, said he lives with his parents in San Diego but had stayed with an aunt in Tijuana the previous night. He said he sometimes stays with his aunt because he has a girlfriend and many friends in Tijuana.

"I know a lot of students like me who just come down a couple of times a week," said Adrian, dressed in jeans, a sweat shirt and Converse tennis shoes. "Tonight, I'm staying at home."

Victor, a 14-year-old ninth-grader at Castle Park High School who was crossing into Mexico one afternoon, said his family has an apartment in the South Bay and a home in Tijuana. He said he was going to Mexico that day to see his sick grandmother.

"My mom's there taking care of my grandmother, and I'm just going to visit," Victor said. "I'll be coming back tonight. I always come back if I go to Tijuana."