School District to Seek Back Tuition From Five Families it Says Violated Residency Requirements

The appointment of Kristine Cecere as principal of School No. 1 for another year was not the only walk-in resolution the Fort Lee Board of Education passed Monday at its regular business meeting. The BOE also passed five separate resolutions to notify the parents of five students determined to be in violation of the district’s residency requirements that they are ineligible to attend Fort Lee schools and that the district intends to take legal action to recover back tuition.

Fort Lee Board of Education president Arthur Levine said Tuesday they are the first five cases since the school district formed a residency committee, hired a new residency officer and announced it would “more vigorously enforce” residency requirements and adopt stronger measures to ensure that students who are not residents of the borough do not attend Fort Lee Schools.

Board attorney Matthew Giacobbe explained at Monday’s meeting that the residency officer’s job is “to ensure and investigate vigorously to make sure that the children that are attending the Fort Lee public school system are appropriately domiciled or residing in Fort Lee in accordance with state law and regulation.”

“And when they’re not, there’s a procedure upon which the Board of Education can act—and that’s what we’re doing here tonight—based on an investigation,” Giacobbe said. “It’s ongoing, and it will continue.”

Each of the five walk-in resolutions (#2B-#6B) passed with the same wording except for initials identifying each student. The resolutions say essentially that an investigation revealed that the parents of each student “are not residents of the Borough,” and that the student “is therefore ineligible to receive a free public education in the District.”

“Further,” the resolutions read, “the Board directs the administration to initiate the necessary legal action(s) to recover tuition sums for the time [the student] was educated by the District as a non-resident pupil.”

“There’s only litigation if the family decides to challenge it,” Giacobbe said. “They have a right to challenge the action of the board … very often these cases are resolved without challenging.”

Levine said Tuesday that the district will seek back tuition in the five cases whether or not the parents choose to challenge the board’s decision. But he also said if they do challenge that decision and lose, they may be have to pay more than just back tuition.

“If they did challenge it, and we incurred legal fees, I imagine that would be part of the damages we would seek,” Levine said, adding that how much it costs the district per year per student depends in part on what school they attended.

“On average, we’re talking about $15,000 a year,” he said. “I don’t believe any multi-year is involved at this moment. Had we not caught it, it would have become multi-year.”

Levine said the district has no way of knowing at this point how many students may still be in violation, but he also said, “We know there’s a number out there.”

“We hired this person; We know that there are more out there, and we think that by going after people vigorously, including getting judgments, that maybe people will think twice about coming to our district illegally,” Levine said. “And if someone is here improperly, we want them out, and we want to send a message … It’s putting an additional burden on the taxpayer. It’s putting an additional burden on our system, which, with our overcrowding, we can ill afford. And certainly, if those people want to move to Fort Lee, we’re happy to have them come to our schools, but we will go after anybody who is [determined to be in violation].”