Poor Mom Gets Drug Testing For Sending Kid To Affluent School

Ohio governor John Kasich has reduced the charges against Kelly Williams-Bolar, of Akron, who had been jailed for using her father's address to enroll her children in a neighboring school district (See Black Mom Jailed For Sending Kids to White School).

Williams-Bolar had served 9 days in jail and risked being denied a teaching credential, for which she had been studying at the time of the conviction. Kasich reduced the convictions to two misdemeanors, saying the original penalty was excessive, in spite of a unanimous parole board ruling against leniency (from the Cleveland Plain Dealer).

Williams-Bolar’s attorney is hailing the move has a victory, suggesting that it will allow her to keep her teaching aid job and possibly clear her name in the future. Yet she must still report for probation, serve 80 hours of community service, work full-time, not take any drugs or alcohol, and pay the cost of her prosecution (from tonight’s Pacifica Evening News). The parole board’s conditions include frequent random urinalysis testing for drugs, as well as submission of DNA.

This hardly sounds like a victory for a single mother struggling to get by in a low-paying job. Teaching aid jobs provide barely enough income for a single person to survive, yet Williams-Bolar must also provide for her children, pay court costs and do community service in her spare time. Furthermore, she was convicted of “stealing” educational services, not drug or alcohol offenses. Thus, it seems particularly oppressive, paternalistic and judgmental of her parenting ability to tack on the drug and alcohol requirements.

Ultimately, though, Williams-Bolar should not have received any punishment at all. Schools receive the bulk of their funding from property taxes, yet renters and homeless people, whose children are entitled to attend public schools, do not contribute any property taxes toward the school systems. Williams-Bolar was in fact homeless at the time of the “crime,” alternately couch surfing at her father’s house and at a friend’s apartment. She was punished because of her daughter’s skin color and poverty, both of which were seen by school district officials as liabilities that might have brought down their test scores or scared affluent parents.

School Paid $6,000 to Private Eye to Spy on Black Mom

Today I received a reply to my post, “Black Mom Jailed for Sending Kids to White School,” arguing that Kelly Williams-Bolar was in jail for refusing to admit guilt. This is not entirely true. Three others were found guilty of a similar offense and were offered the chance to pay the “tuition” they “stole” from the Copley Township School District. They chose to pay and did not have to go to jail. Had Williams-Bolar paid the $30,000, she too might have been off the hook.

It was not so much an issue of admitting guilt as one of extortion. After all, the courts do not generally allow thieves to steal and then apologize and return the stolen property in exchange for their freedom. Ms. Williams-Bolar did not actually steal anything and there wasn’t any actual property that she could return. To her credit, she was reported as saying from jail, “If I had to do it all over again, would I have done it?. . .I would have done it again. . . but I would have been more detailed.”

Of course, if she had $30,000 to give to the school district, she probably wouldn’t have been living in a housing project in the first place, and very likely would have had a better neighborhood school for her daughters to go to, thus negating the desire to get them into the Copley School District.

Property is Theft

Like most legal proceedings, this was about property rights, not morality or right and wrong. Copley Township schools were fighting to keep their schools white and middle class, and to maintain their children’s social advantage. Williams-Bolar was punished in order to send a message to others to keep off their property. This message was so important to the Copely School District that they spent $6,000 on a private investigator to spy on her and try to dig up proof she didn’t live in Copely.

One hundred parents were initially charged with falsifying records to get their children into the Copely School District. However, 96 were able to “prove” that they were entitled to be there and were let off the hook, according the ABC news. ABC did not mention how they were able to prove their legitimacy, nor did they investigate the validity of these claims, which may or may not have been true. Williams-Bolar also provided evidence she lived in the district and even produced several documents, including a W-2 form, to support these claims. Perhaps she just wasn’t able to afford as good an attorney as the others and perhaps the others had not been subjected to $6,000 worth of surveillance.

A Glimmer of Hope

Williams-Bolar was visited in jail by State Representative Zack Milovich, who says he will fight to help her realize her dream of becoming a school teacher. This may require changing some laws or giving her a pardon, as she was convicted of a felony and the state Department of Education bans felons from teaching in Ohio.