By Keegan Hasson and Eli Hendler

With a few mouse clicks, a family can purchase all of the documents that it needs to attend an out-of-zone APS school on Craigslist.

That was one of the findings of the March investigative report into address fraud. Since the APS Office of Student Relations received an anonymous complaint detailing multiple  cases of fraud in the Grady football program last November, APS has been reviewing its registration policy. The investigation not only unveiled multiple systematic loopholes, but also brought to light an archetypal culture that Principal Timothy Guiney believes to be rampant not only at Grady and across APS but also on a regional and even national level.

“When [parents are] attempting to falsify, it is not done out of malicious intent,” Guiney said. “It is done out of an attempt to create the best possible outcome for their children, whom they love. The school right where it lives may not provide all of the opportunities that [a high-achieving school] does.”

In the past, the district has relied heavily on community involvement in order to root out transgressors. APS District 3 board member Matt Westmoreland believes that APS needs to lift this enforcement burden off the community’s shoulders.

“We’ve known that it’s been an issue for a long time,” Westmoreland said. “We just haven’t really addressed it as much as we have needed to. … We don’t want an environment where teachers, parents and students are writing down the names of people and then turning them into the administration. It’s on the school system to make sure that we’ve got a solid process in place, a problem that [Superintendent Dr. Meria Carstarphen] and I are committed to solving.”

While the district has still not passed and implemented policy changes, steps have already been taken locally to cut down on document falsification. The Grady football program attracted a considerable amount of the attention after investigators found that 11 players were out of district and qualifying to play with fraudulent addresses. As a result, first-year Head Coach Earthwind Moreland aims to independently verify each athlete’s residential status.

“One thing that I did [this year] was make everybody fill out a little information sheet,” Moreland said. “That way I will be able to cover a few bases on different levels. This is a big system, so it’ll be hard to catch every single person.”

Even though he fears that he could not eliminate address fraud entirely, Moreland has pledged to work closely with the school registrar and the new athletic director in order to fill in the cracks.

The athletic department has always held this obligation; however, the investigation uncovered that assistant coaches went so far as to drive out-of-zone athletes to their homes after practice on multiple occasions. Thus, Guiney believes that any solution to document falsification must be a joint effort, with boosted discipline  from both the school registrar and the athletic department. In a press conference following the release of the investigation, former superintendent Erroll Davis promised that registrars would be given more assistance in document verification- and Carstarphen has followed through on Davis’s promise.

“I asked [the district leadership] for a couple of people, at a minimum, that could assist in our school registrar’s office,” Guiney said. “So we did have two district personnel for that rush in the first few days [of school] and they helped a great deal.”

President of the Georgia Association of Educators Dr. Sid Chapman believes that these newly implemented procedures may serve as a temporary deterrent, but as long as systemic academic disparities exist, the motive to commit address fraud will never be eradicated. He contends that increasing funding towards specific causes of poor academic achievement, like teacher turnover rates, can help alleviate those statewide imbalances.

“[We need to increase] incentives, whether it’s salary or even bonus incentives, that bring [teacher] longevity into those [kinds of] schools,” Chapman said. “Those teachers need all of the help that they can get, [so we also need to] give them support personnel.”

These more entrenched problems will be much more difficult to solve. In the meantime, Dean of Student Discipline and student relations administrator Chantel Mullen, who the complaint was originally filed to, affirms that APS has taken swift, appropriate personnel action to diminish the likelihood of occurrences similar to those of last year. Westmoreland hopes that the hiring of Carstarphen will bring about a more comprehensive solution in the near future. As the system finalizes its review of districtwide registration policy, however, Mullen and Westmoreland both agree that it is up to the APS employees themselves to create a principled and respectable institution.

“APS strives to maintain a highly ethical culture,” Mullen said. “Thus, employees who falsified documents or knowingly allowed students to attend out-of-zone schools have suffered consequences [such as] letters of direction, suspension, reassignment and termination. There will be more findings and personnel action, and more penalties may be applied.”