Here's the latest info, along with a recap of the previously-known details, about Kelley Williams-Bolar, the mother in Akron, Ohio, was was found guilty of felony tampering with evidence about 2 weeks ago for lying on a variety of government forms about her two children's residence.
We've seen two diaries on this topic, both of them alleging, without even one shred of evidence, that the woman was targeted because she was black. I argued, over and over again, that there was no evidence that the prosecution was racially-motivated.
Turns out I was right.
What'dya know?
So, I'll start with the new info, for those who have kept up with the story. If you haven't been keeping up with this story, you might want to go to this link to see some of the foundation of this story.
One of the issues that people raised was that we didn't know the race of the other families who had been targeted by the Copley-Fairlawn School district. They wanted to know if any white families had been targeted by the private investigators that the district hired to expose families who were out of district but not paying the required tuition for their children to attend school in Copley. They also wanted to know if there were other black families who, when caught, weren't prosecuted.
Well, now we do.
And guess what?
From 2005 through Friday afternoon, the Copley-Fairlawn School District formally confronted 48 families whose children were illegally attending its schools. The breakdown:
• 29 families were black.
• 15 families were white.
• two families were Asian.
• one family was Pacific Islander.
• one family was multiracial.
So, it sure looks like it was the behavior of the parents, and not racism, that drove the school district to challenge the residency of the children attending Copley schools.
And that's what I (and several other determined posters, all working separtely to learn about this event and inform users here at DK) repeatedly asserted - that without any evidence that it was racially-motivated vendetta, we shouldn't assume that it was a racially-motivated vendetta! There was no evidence.
And why was this mother the only one who was prosecuted? Again, like several of us stated over and over again, it was because no one else behaved as she did. She got caught taking her kids to an out of district school, and after that, she first tried to pretend that she actually lived in that district by getting her driver's license changed to reflect her Dad's address. She then got caught again, and she had a hearing in front of the school district. They determined that her children didn't live in the district. She even tried to raise an issue of racism with the US Dept of Education Civil Rights division - they found that there was no evidence of race in this finding. She then continued to lie about her children's residence, and she continued to try to generate dishonest evidence that she lived with her father, getting her W-2's mailed to her Dad's address for example.
In her trial, she and her lawyer tried to use the fact that she made an inquiry to the school district before her kids began attending, and she used her Dad's address then. Of course she did - she was pretending that she lived there when she was directing an inquiry to the school district. This was a premediated crime on her part! She knew that unless she pretended that her kids lived there with her Dad, she'd owe tuition payments to the school district, and she didn't want to have to make tuition payments. And she didn't really want to move there anyway - she wanted to retain her subsidized apartment in Akron, and unless she had kids who were her dependents, she couldn't continue to live there!
And, contrary to the assertions of many posters, she wasn't sending her kids to that suburban school district because of the better schools.
She was doing it because her apartment (in a multi-family home) had reportedly been burglarized. She worked during the day, and she didn't want her children to have to be latchkey kids and go home to an empty home. She wanted them to be able to go home to her Dad's house, so they'd have someone at home after school to supervise them. One daughter was middle school-aged, and the other was in elementary school.
(A local preacher involved in spiritual support of the mom) reiterated what Williams-Bolar has always said: that her decision to move her children from Akron schools to Copley-Fairlawn was not based on a belief of her children receiving a better education in suburbia.
Williams-Bolar, who works in special education for Akron schools, told the Beacon Journal last week that moving the girls to their grandfather's home in Copley was intended to ensure their safety and avoid a latch-key situation.
And the Akron Beacon Journal Education Reporter tells us this too!
The national attention that the Kelley Williams-Bolar case is getting is missing a basic fact that our newspaper has reported more than once:
Williams-Bolar has said she enrolled her daughters in Copley-Fairlawn schools because she was concerned about the safey of her West Akron neighborhood, not because she was unsatisfied with Akron Public Schools. ABJ courts reporter Ed Meyer has reported this more than once in his coverage, including this section where William-Bolars’ attorney Kerry O’Brien explains her concerns in court:
Guess what? I said this last week. Clearly. Repeatedly.
She has clearly stated that she wanted to retain dual households. She wanted to have her cake and eat it too. She wanted the benefits of claiming that her kids lived with her when it benefitted her to say that, and she wanted to be able to claim that they resided in her Dad's school district when that benefitted her!
She said
She still contends she had two homes: Hartford Avenue in Akron, where she lived in subsidized housing provided by the Akron Metropolitan Housing Authority, and her father's home on Black Pond Drive in Copley.
''I had a home, but I also had my family home [with my father],'' she said. ''The family home just so happened be in Copley.."
But one doesn't get to have two households! Kids reside in one household.
She also told us that
...she wanted to maintain her independence and declined to move in with her father.
But if she and her kids didn't live with her Dad, then she was obligated to pay out of district tuition for her two kids!
She said
''If I had the opportunity, if I had to do it all over again, would I have done it? . . . ,'' she said. After almost a half-minute of silence, she answered her own question.
''I would have done it again,'' she said. ''But I would have been more detailed. . . .
Translation?
She would have done a better job of lying about where her kids resided in order to be able to send them to an out of district school without paying out of district tuition!
Because her kids didn't live with her father. They went there after school. They'd then leave that home in Copley, and they'd sleep at her home in Akron. She'd then drive them to the school bus stop closest to her Dad's home the next morning - a dishonest tactic to make it look as though the two kids had walked to that bus stop from their Grandfather's home.
She was convicted of lying on a variety of forms, and being dishonest about her child support, income, and residency to gain reduced-price lunches and freedom from tuition payments.
Even after the second hearing, when it was also determined that her kids didn't reside with her Dad, she simply tore up and disregarded tuition bills sent to her! She thought that she was above the law, since she had a need to have her kids have some after school supervision!
She wanted to do what was best for her kids - that's what a good Mom does, of course - want what's best for one's kids.
But that doesn't give one the right to fraudulently claim that her children resided in-district so that she didn't have to pay tuition.
What else do we know now that we didn't "know" last week?
Well,
Williams-Bolar was not singled out because of her skin color. She was singled out because — unlike 47 other families of varying colors — she openly and continually defied the school system, insisting that her kids lived in the district when they were living with her in Akron, and lying about her income and child support so her kids would get free lunches.
That's what a jury decided unanimously — a jury that included four blacks.
Moreover, when Williams-Bolar cried racism two years ago, the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights investigated her situation and concluded that race had nothing to do with it.
The office issued a four-page ruling on Dec. 10, 2008, that proclaimed white and black families in the same situation had been treated the same.
Imagine that - this is exactly what I said last week too! I repeatedly said that there was no evidence that racism was involved, and I challenged anyone and everyone to provide any evidence that there was any racism evident.
The people whose job it is to protect the civil rights of minorities examined this, and they came down on the side of the school district, and against the argument of the minority woman, because they saw no evidence of racism!
What else do we know now that we didn't know last week?
Well, the prosecutor has released a statement.
''Ms. Williams-Bolar was the only case that could not be resolved at the parent level because she would not acknowledge that she did anything wrong and she refused to cooperate in any way.''
Akron City Council President Marco Sommerville said he and others met with (D.A.) Walsh for two hours Wednesday to discuss how the agency handled the prosecution of Williams-Bolar.
Sommerville said Walsh steadfastly stood by the decision to file multiple felony charges.
''She just felt that Ms. Williams-Bolar had continuously not been truthful and had been deceitful about the things she was doing with her children and where she was living at. She felt it was a long pattern and she couldn't overlook it,'' Sommerville said.
''Ms. Williams-Bolar was the only case that could not be resolved at the parent level because she would not acknowledge that she did anything wrong and she refused to cooperate in any way.
''As such, this office had no choice but to take action against Ms. Williams-Bolar, in accordance with the law and on behalf of residents that choose to follow the rules.''
She continued to lie, even after being caught twice. She claimed that she was being harassed. She claimed she was a victim, when she really wasn't. And when she was in pre-trial discussions, she still refused to acknowledge her guilt! It was undeniable, yet she denied it, and refused to own up to her own bad behavior.
And guess what? I said this too last week. And so did many others.
But it's not about me being right.
It's about all those who were wrong, yet refused to admit it. It's about this site buying into what are basically conspiracy theories, seeing racism where there's no evidence of racism, and putting that nonsense on the Rec List. This site is supposed to be "reality-based". Too often it's not. Too often people read a diary, get inflamed, and go off the deep end. And when other, logical users try to rein in that hysteria, what often happens is that those who have the facts on their side get mocked, disrespected, and hated on for ruining the CT with reality! It's about those people disrespecting our justice system and a jury and their verdict. They saw all the evidence, and they determined that her kids didn't reside with their grandfather, and so the mom was lying on forms she filled out that asserted, under penalty of perjury, that the kids did reside with their grandfather. The disrespect folks have had for this jury really bothers me.
School funding in America ain't adequate to take care of the needs of all children. But that doesn't make it okay to lie and steal and circumvent the rules in order to benefit one family's children.
If you think that school funding is badly managed, unfairly distributed and inadequately funding, then work to change that. I have. I continue to do so, and will continue to fight for both additional funding and better distribution of the currently available funds to help those children who need funding the most to get the best education they can.
But I'll be damned if I let one woman trying to game the system be held up as a modern day Rosa Parks when she's not that at all. She wasn't trying to fix the school system at all. She was trying to game the system by retaining her subsidized housing in the city while allowing her kids to attend suburban schools without paying tuition, so that she had free after-school care via her father.
Rosa Parks was trying to fix the system for everyone. Kelley Williams-Bolar was not trying to do that. There's no evidence she was trying to get her kids a better education. By her own statements, she simply wanted there to be someone at home when her children got off the bus after school, and so she enrolled them in the school district her father lived in and pretended that the kids actually lived with their grandfather. That's not trying to fix the system. That's trying to abuse the system. Her kids have no rights to attend that school district without paying tuition simply because their grandfather pays property taxes in that school district. Only residents of the school district, or residents of any taxing district, get direct benefits of that taxing district. One can't garner benefits simply because one's relatives live in any particular muncipality or school district. It doesn't work that way.
Update ----
Here's more info about the father.
Turns out that he's filed so many frivilous lawsuits alleging race discrimination that he has been barred from filing any more lawsuits in a couple of different jurisdictions in Ohio.
As I said above, he and his daughter filed a lawsuit with the US Dept of Education's Civil Rights dept, alleging that it was race discrimination that caused his grandchildren and his daughter to be targeted. That group investigated his allegations and found them to be baseless.
Williams, who declined to comment about any of this when contacted Wednesday, also claimed race was the reason the family was prosecuted in the Copley-Fairlawn school case.
In that suit, filed jointly with his daughter, the would-be teacher wrote (verbatim): ''My name is Kelley Williams-Bolar. I am of under two protective class acts. I am Black and age discrimination because I am over 40.''
This man appears to be taking advantage of the fact that he knows that racism still exists to claim that every difficult thing that has ever happened to him is as a result of racism and discrimination against him!
Williams also claimed race was the reason Summit County placed liens on his house for unpaid property taxes. (At one point, he owed $44,000 in taxes for his property on Black Pond Drive, which he finally paid after refinancing.)
Yeah, because the county only goes after blacks who owe $44,000 in back taxes, not whites? Really?
He lied about his home's status to gain financial advantage.
Summit County court records show a foreclosure judgment was filed against Williams over tax matters, in March 2008, involving his Copley Township home.
Williams filed an appeal of that judgment and lost in Akron's 9th District court, then filed a subsequent appeal in the Ohio Supreme Court.
In June 2009, the late Chief Justice, Thomas J. Moyer, threw out Williams' appeal, which was based on his claim that his home was incorporated under his wife's name as the Elizabeth Williams Group Home Inc.
Those of you here at DK who have bought into this false meme, that this mother was targeted because of her race, should look at what her father has done to see that the apple didn't fall far from the tree.
Oh, and apparently, when they tried to get the "power of attorney" to fly as proof that the grandfather was the guardian of the kids, Kelley Williams-Bolar had to claim that she was serving overseas in the military. Of course, she wasn't! But it didn't stop her from claiming that!
And here's another link with the actual documents filed in the case.
It includes this info.
October 2, 2007: Williams-Bolar signs free lunch application for 2007 school year; lists no income or child support. An investigation later confirmed she received $800/month in child support in addition to income from employment with Akron Public Schools.
And
February 8, 2008: School sends invoice to Williams-Bolar for tuition. Invoice returned: "Return to sender person has deployed overseas return in 18 months."
February 22, 2008: AMHA interviews Williams-Bolar and questions "deployment." Bolar admits she lied; confirms she and children reside at Hartford Avenue in Akron; handwrote on statement confirming she and children reside at Hartford and that parent's address just used to enroll children in Copley.
May 15, 16, 17, 2008: Updated surveillance confirms Williams-Bolar still taking children to school bus stop in Copley.
You should read the whole link. It's quite telling.