Homeless Woman Arrested for Sending Son to Public School

posted by blankfist 1 decade 3 years ago • 1,875 views
From: http://thestir.cafemom.com/big_kid/119190/homeless_woman_arrested_for_sending

A homeless woman in Connecticut has been arrested for one of the most unthinkable reasons imaginable -- she sent her son to school. Tonya McDowell, 33, was arrested last week and charged with first-degree larceny for stealing $15,686 -- the cost of the public school education for her 6-year-old son.

To make matters worse, the child's babysitter, who provided documentation that said the boy lived at her Norwalk address, was evicted from her public housing unit for her role in his education. McDowell and her son had been bouncing between an acquaintance's home in Bridgeport and a homeless shelter in Norwalk with the boy spending afternoons with the babysitter. The school he attended was in Norwalk School District, which had recently decided to crack down on infiltrators.

Norwalk Mayor Richard Moccia told the Stamford Advocate, "This now sends a message to other parents that may have been living in other towns and registering their kids with phony addresses."

[click link to read full article]

14 Comments

dystopianfuturetoday says...

If you want to do something more productive than just laugh and joke about it, send a message to the Mayor.

http://www.norwalkct.org/forms.aspx?FID=90

Here is what I wrote:

A homeless woman was arrested for trying to educate her child in your city. This is disgusting. How do you expect her to attempt to break the cycle of poverty without an education for her child. It is your duty as an elected official to keep this kind of injustice from happening in your city. If you have some basic humanity in you, you will do something to fix this.

gwiz665 says...

Look, everybody wants to be like Germany, but do they have the pure strength of will??
>> ^radx:

In communist Germany, you go to prison for not sending your kid(s) to school.

blankfist says...

>> ^direpickle:

If only the school were privately run. Then he would've been able to go for free!


That has nothing to do with this story.

Either way, public schools aren't free. What gave you that idea? Every tax-paying citizen is forced to fund public schools, and education for children is compulsory. The government then criminalized her for playing by their made up rules.

But, no, go ahead and make this a straw man argument against private schools for whatever reason.

direpickle says...

>> ^blankfist:

>> ^direpickle:
If only the school were privately run. Then he would've been able to go for free!

That has nothing to do with this story.
Either way, public schools aren't free. What gave you that idea? Every tax-paying citizen is forced to fund public schools, and education for children is compulsory. That means, this woman had to educate her child through the public school system because I doubt paying for private school was an option for someone who's destitute. The government then criminalized her for playing by their rules.
But, no, go ahead and make this a straw man argument against private schools.


I've got nothing against private schools. I went to private schools for parts of my schooling. I'm just calling you out on the fact that the only thing you seem capable of doing is saying "lol government sucks" (It does, frequently. It does, here.) without ever, ever suggesting an alternative. By painting this as a 'lol statist idiots', with your definition of 'statist' is 'anything involving the state, even when they're behaving the most like private industry', the alternative is private schools. Right?

Or are you suggesting that some outside entity created for the common good ought to fund schooling for everybody? Is that your argument?

Or are you, like a sane person, suggesting that education ought to be funded by the public (as it is now), but that there shouldn't be penalties for this woman? That is a reasonable position to take.

Edit:

Furthermore, this isn't a case of "non tax-payer arrested for sending child to school" as much as "woman arrested for sending child to school in a district in which she does not live." Her address was in another school district. The kid probably could've gone to school there with no problem. Likely the education isn't as good there, so again, there IS an argument to be made as to whether kids ought to be able to cross districts to go to less-shitty schools. But you're the one building a straw-man here.

blankfist says...

>> ^direpickle:

>> ^blankfist:
>> ^direpickle:
If only the school were privately run. Then he would've been able to go for free!

That has nothing to do with this story.
Either way, public schools aren't free. What gave you that idea? Every tax-paying citizen is forced to fund public schools, and education for children is compulsory. That means, this woman had to educate her child through the public school system because I doubt paying for private school was an option for someone who's destitute. The government then criminalized her for playing by their rules.
But, no, go ahead and make this a straw man argument against private schools.

I've got nothing against private schools. I went to private schools for parts of my schooling. I'm just calling you out on the fact that the only thing you seem capable of doing is saying "lol government sucks" (It does, frequently. It does, here.) without ever, ever suggesting an alternative. By painting this as a 'lol statist idiots', with your definition of 'statist' is 'anything involving the state, even when they're behaving the most like private industry', the alternative is private schools. Right?
Or are you suggesting that some outside entity created for the common good ought to fund schooling for everybody? Is that your argument?


I wasn't comparing private to public. I didn't say anything about private schools actually - you did. But since you keep bringing it up, I'll say this. The government forces taxpayers to pay for the schools and then makes education compulsory. So, when they make mistakes like this, which is a pretty fucking horrendous, they need to have their noses rubbed in it. That's where I come in with my obligatory 'lol statist idiots' comments.

Say what you will about private schools. At least they don't force anyone to attend, and then make them criminals for doing so. That's the kind of deep buttfucking only your beloved statism could deliver.

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