Much of President Obama’s political rhetoric is spent on education reform, centering on the parents having a chance to send their children to better schools, through firing bad teachers, vouchers and charter schools. But in the case of African-American mother Kelley Williams-Bolar, her desire to get her children better educational placement landed her in jail, and may well derail her aspirations of becoming a teacher herself.
Williams-Bolar, 40, and her two children live in housing projects in Akron, Ohio. For two years, she sent them to the predominately white school in the Copley-Fairlawn district, where her father lived, because it was a safer environment — the high crime rate in her area drove her decision. Her children’s presence caused suspicion in the community, driving the suburban school district to go on a witch hunt. The district hired a private investigator to dig up their residential records and it turned out she listed the children as living in that district, although they actually stayed with her part-time.
On Saturday, a jury found Williams-Bolar guilty on two counts of tampering with records. She was also facing one count of grand theft, but the judge declared a mistrial on that charge after the jury couldn’t reach a verdict.
“I felt that some punishment or deterrent was needed for other individuals who might think to defraud the various school systems,” Judge Patricia Cosgrove told NewsChannel 5 after the sentencing.
Prosecutors said Williams-Bolar lived in Akron, but falsified enrollment papers in the Copley-Fairlawn School District so her two girls could attend schools for two years.
Prosecutors said the misrepresentation cost the district about $30,000. Copley-Fairlawn does not have open enrollment and out-of-district tuition is about $800 per month.
“It’s …impossible to ignore the fact that Williams-Bolar “a black mother who has been jailed for sending her kids to a white school district,” says Change.org member Caitlin Lord, who decided to take a stand on WIlliams-Bolar’s behalf. “She lives in a predominantly minority housing project, while Copley, where she sent her kids for school, is mostly lily-white and middle class. While the Copley school district screams about lost property taxes, the broader problem is that we’ve set up a fundamentally unequal education system in which it’s a crime to send your children to a school where you can trust that they will be safe. The judge wants her sentence to send a message of deterrence. How about a message about the deep-rooted injustice of our educational system?”
“When the punishment does not fit the crime, when those punished are disproportionately people of color and/or economically disadvantaged, when victimless crimes like Williams-Bolar’s are punished more severely than violent crimes such as rape, assault and domestic abuse, there is no way for me to feel truly safe or protected by our courts,” Lord added.