Greenwich To Spend $25K Checking Students' Residency

GREENWICH, Conn. (CBSNewYork/AP) - Greenwich officials plan to spend $25,000 to check the residency of all the students enrolling in its elementary schools for the coming school year.

The Board of Education approved a plan last week to hire temporary employees who will assist district officials in checking the residency of all 4,100 students enrolling in kindergarten through fifth grade, the Greenwich Time reported. Plans call for completing the project by Oct. 1.

It is a change from current policy, which requires only parents of new students to prove residency in the district.

The project comes amid complaints from some parents in the wealthy New York City suburb about potential residency problems, especially at the New Lebanon School, which sits a few hundred yards from the town's border with Port Chester, N.Y.

Last fall, the district conducted a review that found 29 vehicles with New York registration plates dropping off students at the school. A subsequent investigation did not find any out-of-town students, according to district officials.

``I don't think there's rampant abuse,'' Leslie Moriarty, the school board's chairman told the newspaper. ``I would expect there are some cases that might be discovered, but we'll find out.''

School officials had sought a requirement last year that landlords provide notarized affidavits confirming the residency of tenants with children. But education officials scrapped that plan after concluding that obtaining such an affidavit was an undue burden for families who rent.

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