Dr. Charles D. Coletti addresses New Rochelle school board Tuesday night.
NEW ROCHELLE, NY — The auditor hired to conduct a district-wide residency verification program for the City School District of New Rochelle is now projecting the final number of wrongly-enrolled students to be between 1% to 3% of the total student population of approximately 13,500 students or 135 to 405 students. At a projected average cost of $25,000 per student, the auditor put the available savings at between $2.6 million and $7.8 million.
Dr. Charles D. Coletti, former Port Chester Superintendent, was hired last summer to oversee a residency audit of every school in the District. He addressed the school board to provide his second board update. The first update was given in December.
Coletti said there were five types of respondents: (1) Fully Compliant Families; (2) Non-Cooperative Families; (3) Formulated Suspicion Families; (4) Persistently Non-Responsive Families; (5) Host Families.
Coletti and his team of attendance teachers have completed 4 cohorts.
The first cohort is 720 rising 9th graders out of which 702 (98%). 18 were Persistently Non-Responsive Families. 8 were Formulated Suspicion Families.
The second cohort is 1,190 students at Albert Leonard Middle School out of which 1,014 were reviewed (85.2%). 115 families were getting extended reviews. 61 families were pending.
The third cohort is 1,021 Isaac E. Young Middle School out of which 833 were reviewed (86%). 85 families were getting extended reviews. 103 families were pending
The fourth cohort is 456 George M. Davis Jr. Elementary School. Data was not provided.
The remaining schools are as follows:
• Ward School Jan. 14 – Feb. 15
• Trinity School Feb. 25 – March 15
• Barnard ECC Mar. 18 – Mar. 29
• Jefferson School Apr. 1 – Apr. 12
• Columbus School Apr. 22 – May 10
• Webster School May 13 – May 24
• NRHS Grade 10 May 28 – June 21
Coletti described 9 actual examples of suspicious behavior by some parents:
• Listed a post office as a home address
• Presented out of date records
• Claimed not to have a phone bill because phone was included in the rent
• Claimed family rented an apartment within an apartment.
• Submitted a third party affidavit from a person who said they saw the child come and go from home every day where the third party was a Mount Vernon resident.
• Court records differ from families claims
• Father who supposedly spent a lot of time with his kids lives west of the Mississippi
• Person listed a New York City phone number as a home phone
• Person listed their home address as 515 North Avenue (New Rochelle City Hall)
RELATED
Residency Verification Program PPT
New Rochelle Board of Education 2011 Residency Audit
Director of Pupil Services for the City School District of New Rochelle, Dr. Rhonda Jones, makes a presented to the New Rochelle Board of Education on a Residency Verification project she undertook in 2011.