Kenwood Academy often makes house calls to verify students' residency — a practice some parents call invasive

LaKeisha Crutcher’s apartment was just three blocks from Kenwood Academy High School, which is why she was surprised at the hoops she had to jump through to register her son at the South Side public school.

In addition to asking for her lease and electric bill, school officials came to her home to confirm her teenage son really lived there, a practice Kenwood routinely does to verify a student lives in its attendance boundaries and is indeed eligible to enroll at the highly sought after school. The school is so vigorous in its checks that in some cases parents describe officials even entering their child’s bedroom. One parent said they surveyed the art on the walls.

While strictly verifying residency is something that often happens in suburbs like Oak Park, it is rare at other public schools in the city.

While the two men who visited Crutcher’s home before her son enrolled as a freshman left quickly after seeing family photos on the walls in her front hall, she found the process to be overly intrusive.

“I thought it was a violation of my rights,” Crutcher said.

On the district level, the inspector general for Chicago Public Schools is responsible for, among other duties, investigating allegations that families don’t live in the city, as required. But at each school, principals can decide to conduct home visits to confirm neighborhood students live within the attendance boundaries, CPS said.

At many Chicago high schools, especially on the South and West sides, steady enrollment declines have made the need to check where students live effectively moot. And, the majority of students don’t attend the school their address is zoned for — the so-called “neighborhood school” where they are guaranteed a seat.

But Kenwood is different. Known for its robust academics, accomplished sports teams and quality music program, the school near the University of Chicago — which serves both neighborhood and magnet students — is in high demand among South Side families who lack other desirable options.

Given the interest, the administration says it takes verifying eligibility for the neighborhood program seriously to avoid families fraudulently claiming they live in the boundaries. Kenwood Principal Karen Calloway said it’s school policy to visit the homes of all incoming neighborhood students who are registering, although she said they rarely enter kids' bedrooms.

Kenwood says it conducts about 150 home visits a year. In a written statement, Calloway said “seeing the family and/or student living at the reported residence serves as evidence.” Calloway said she has seen people trying to falsely claim a neighborhood spot over the last two decades. Just last month, it was revealed that the inspector general for CPS found five Kenwood basketball players falsified proof of where they live or provided inaccurate home addresses.

But multiple parents described the home inspection process as intrusive, and WBEZ found the policy is inconsistently applied. Among the parents interviewed, families who rent all described being subject to a home visit, while several homeowning parents said no school official ever visited. In a statement, Kenwood said it conducts the visits for both renters and homeowners.

Kenwood mom Terri Smith, who owns her home in Hyde Park, said the school did not conduct a home visit as part of the enrollment process. Before the information about the basketball players became public, Smith said home visits are “a terrible use of resources.”

John Bartlett, the executive director of the Metropolitan Tenants Organization, had not heard of the policy, but he said, “There is a big stigma against renters in this country. Renters often get blamed for problems or people assume renters are scammers.”

But not all parents oppose the policy. For Marshall Mays, Kenwood pride runs deep. She graduated from the school and so did her mother. She never could imagine her daughter going anywhere except Kenwood, so when it came time to enroll her in high school, Mays was fine with obliging with the school’s policies.

“If you're admitted to the school under the premise that you live in the neighborhood, and they're saving space for neighborhood students to be able to get into the school, I guess it doesn't bother me that it is required,” she said.

The stakes were highlighted late last month when the five players, along with three coaches, on Kenwood’s boys basketball team were suspended from the state tournament after evidence from an ongoing CPS inspector general investigation found they were in violation of residency rules, which could include students living outside the attendance boundaries or outside Chicago. According to a statement from the Illinois High School Association, which governs high school sports, the CPS IG investigation found multiple players falsified items, such as utility bills, to meet Kenwood’s residency requirements. Others provided inaccurate home addresses.

WBEZ asked CPS if any of the players had received a home visit from a Kenwood official before enrolling. The district would not comment on an ongoing investigation.

The lengths to get — and protect — seats at certain schools

Parents and staff at other CPS schools shared examples of residency fraud with WBEZ. But Kenwood appears to be unique among the most sought-after neighborhood schools in making home inspections a routine part of enrollment.

WBEZ called seven sought-after CPS neighborhood high schools and spoke to clerks and enrollment managers. Only one, Solorio Academy High School on the Southwest Side, said home inspections are done regularly.

The district told WBEZ that some schools that do home visits include Solorio, as well as Farragut, Lincoln Park and Morgan Park, though it noted that visits at Lincoln Park are rare and only done if there are questions about submitted documentation. But in WBEZ’s calls to those schools, only Lincoln Park said district officials could potentially do a home inspection.

Home visits to confirm residency do occur in districts other than CPS, like in neighboring Oak Park.

Gabriela Olivera, the enrollment and registrar manager at Oak Park and River Forest High School, said last year, her team conducted about 180 home visits. Things like returned mail, a call from a landlord or an anonymous tip can prompt an investigation.

She said she has seen it all, from forged utility bills and leases to a parent who had someone pretend to be their landlord when the school called to confirm their residency. Occasionally, parents will falsely claim to be homeless.

Around 2016, Megan Rische was renting a home in Oak Park, where she lived with her four kids. One night, they were heading out of the house to dinner when two men with clipboards approached. They identified themselves as from the school district but never asked to come inside.

“It seems like that sufficed for them, just seeing us all there together,” she said.

Recently, Mayor Brandon Johnson’s school board put a spotlight on neighborhood schools when it signaled a plan to move away from Chicago’s “school choice” system.

Kenwood parents are keenly aware that neighborhood schools are far from created equal. It’s why parents often intentionally rent within the school boundaries.

Chinella Robinson, a Kenwood mom who is running for a seat on the Local School Council and recently started working at the education advocacy group Raise Your Hand, said the current system forces parents to make hard decisions on behalf of their kids.

“If all of our schools had equal opportunities, equal classes, equal amenities, people wouldn't have to lie to have their children go to other schools,” Robinson told WBEZ in early February.

“If we had equality in schools, I don't think that this would even be a thing.”

Courtney Kueppers is a reporter at WBEZ. WBEZ editor. Kate Grossman contributed reporting to this story.