Homeless woman Tanya McDowell is due in court in Norwalk this morning to facing charges that she illegally enrolled her son in a local elementary school. Educational lobbying groups are planning a news conference in support of McDowell, a single mother with past criminal convictions, for enrolling her five-year-old son in the Norwalk school system under her friend's public housing address, when authorities claim he should have gone to a school in Bridgeport.
McDowell is charged with first-degree larceny and conspiracy to commit first-degree larceny, and if convicted, faces up to 20 years in prison and a $15,000 fine (the estimated value of her son's education during the four months that he attended the school). The case has attracted the attention of the Connecticut Parents Union, whose founder Gwen Samuel said in a statement that "it is time to end laws that penalize and lead to the arrest of parents trying to get a better education for their children." The CPU will be at the Norwalk Superior Court today while McDowell is arraigned.
Norwalk Mayor Richard Moccia, meanwhile, says the outrage is not entirely warranted: "This is not a poor, picked-upon homeless person," he said of McDowell, who served an 18-month sentence for robbery and weapons charges and was arrested last year for marijuana possession. "This is an ex-con, and somehow the city of Norwalk is made into the ogre in this. She has a checkered past at best."
Last year, a NJ couple was busted for enrolling their child in Manhattan's prestigious Laguardia High School of Music & Art and the Performing Arts. They owe the Department of Education $20,000.
