A Black woman in Akron, Ohio, has been sentenced to 10 days in county jail followed by community service and four years of probation. Her crime? She was convicted of falsifying residential records in an attempt to send her children to schools in the Copley-Fairlawn area.
Kelley Williams-Bolar was charged on four counts of grand theft for “defrauding” the school district. Her father, who lives in Copley Township, was also charged, but his case has not yet gone to trial.
In addition, Williams-Bolar, who works as a teacher’s aide and has been studying to earn her teaching credential, will now be forbidden from obtaining her teaching degree under Ohio law. “Because of the felony conviction, you will not be allowed to get your teaching degree under Ohio law as it stands today,” said Judge Patricia Cosgrove. “The court’s taking into consideration that is also a punishment that you will have to serve.”
Williams-Bolar sobbed and sank into the arms of sheriff’s deputies as they led her away to start her sentence.
What exactly did Williams-Bolar do? She registered her children as residents of her father’s home in Copley-Fairlawn school district, where schools are better funded and have more resources. The district alleged that they actually resided in subsidized housing with her in Akron.
Since Williams-Bolar’s conviction, a public outcry was been raised in her support. Cosgrove has refused to reconsider the felony conviction.
It is clear to Williams-Bolar’s many supporters that racism is at the heart of the prosecution of a mother who sought to send her children to public schools that she believed would provide her children with a better education.
“This is another new face of racism, bias and discrimination,” wrote someone commenting on the story on the ABC website. Thousands have signed online petitions in support of Williams-Bolar.
“If Ms. Williams and her children had been white would the school have gone to this trouble to expose them as supposed ‘criminals?’” asked a Daily Kos column under the headline “Parenting While Black: Ohio Woman Jailed for ‘Stealing an Education.’” “I think that any fair-minded observer would have to say ‘no.’”
It is ironic that Williams-Bolar was convicted of attempting to choose a better school for her children in light of the recent documentary “Waiting for Superman.” “Superman” serves as the propaganda arm of the so-called education reform movement, which blames teachers for the lower performance on standardized tests of poor children in urban schools.
The film, praised by the corporate media, details the story of five children and their families seeking to enroll in allegedly higher-quality charter schools through a lottery process. The families, willing to go to almost any length to enroll their children in schools they think are better, are portrayed sympathetically.
In his 1991 book “Savage Inequalities,” Jonathan Kozol, exposed the crisis of unequal funding between predominantly white suburban schools and inner-city schools, which serve mainly children of color. That this funding inequality continues to plague the U.S. education system is well documented by ongoing research. This situation results in urban schools where classrooms lack textbooks, students do not have access to art, computers or electives, and where many teachers are inexperienced or lack qualifications to teach their subjects.
Williams-Bolar and her children are no doubt well-acquainted with these “savage inequalities.” This is why she sought to enroll her daughters in the Copley-Fairlawn district. Williams-Bolar was not the only parent to seek the same solution to this crisis: there have been over three dozen reported cases of “document falsification” in the district between Aug. 2006 and June 2008, but Williams-Bolar was the only one prosecuted on felony charges and sent to jail.
What is the solution?
In the United States, public education is supposedly available to all, but due to racism, massive budget cuts and anti-worker policies, the system as a whole has failed to assist millions of families in providing a quality education. While the court has criminalized this mother, where is the criticism of racist capitalist system that deprives children of the essential right to a quality education?
So-called education reformers might use Williams-Bolar’s case to argue for more “choice” or other “market-based” changes to public education. The Party for Socialism and Liberation stands for an alternative to capitalist education “reform.” We demand that free, quality education be a right for all. There is no reason a family should have to suffer to obtain a decent education for their children.
Williams-Bolar should serve no time. It is the system that is criminal.
