Is Kelley Williams-Bolar a criminal or a victim of a screw-up school system

By: Charles Mombo
@charlessmombo
Twitter HASHTAG: #burnedbrass

Is Kelley Williams-Bolar a criminal or a victim of a screw-up school system?

Some referred to it as institutional racism and that is the lack of funding for public school in minority communities. This problem can be easily overlooked and mistaken for something that is literally invisible.

This is the result of two-tier public school systems in this country. One deals with Developed World caliber and the other a Third World caliber. In most cases, the one with minority students are often funded at a Third World level.

What Kelley Williams-Bolar, a 40-year-old, mother did was not uncommon. Williams-Bolar is the Akron, Ohio mother who was charged and found guilty of felony records tampering and served nine days in jail. Prosecutors said she registered her two daughters for school from 2006 to 2008 using her father's address in the suburban Copley-Fairlawn district. Academically, the Copley-Fairlawn school district is a much better school district compared to Williams-Bolar's own school district – Akron district. The Akron City school district met only 4 of 26 yearly progress standards on Ohio Department of Education Report Cards. Copley-Fairlawn City Schools met 26 of 26 yearly progress standards on its Report Cards.

Although Summit County Common Pleas Judge Patricia Cosgrove sentenced Williams-Bolar last week to five years in prison, she reduced the sentence to 10 days. Williams-Bolar will have to serve 80 hours of community service and probation for three years. Williams-Bolar, a single mother, works as a teacher's aide at a high school in Akron. A college senior, she is a semester away from earning her degree in Education at the University of Akron. Her felony conviction bars her from being licensed to teach in the State of Ohio and most states in the U.S.

Excluding legal fees, the Copley-Fairlawn school district spends $6,000 on an investigator to follow and determine Williams-Bolar's actually place of residence. Copley-Fairlawn Superintendent Brian Poe is charging Williams-Bolar $30,000 for two years of tuition for her two daughters.

Williams-Bolar's father, Edward Williams, told CNN affiliate WJW-TV that the children did live with him, so he believed the family was within the law. He said his daughter's Akron neighborhood – where she lives in government-subsidized housing isn't safe. "She had 12 police reports that her house had been broken in, so what am I supposed to do? Just leave them there?" Williams said to WJW-TV. "I mean, I can protect them better if they were with me."

Although Williams-Bolar action of changing her address and sending her children to another school is not uncommon, it does not make her behavior right. A crime is a crime and there's “no If's, and's or but's” about it. It is almost certain that if our educational system was not a one sided system, there would have been no need for Williams-Bolar to use her father's address to enroll her girls in another school district.

Williams-Bolar and her daughters are victims of a screw-up and poorly funded school system. It is also my hopes that Williams-Bolar's case will put a flood light on the problem that millions of poor minority Americans faced – an unfair education funding system that is solely based on local property taxes.