COLUMBUS, Ohio – Some Ohio school districts are tracking families with private investigators in hopes of busting parents who are breaking residency rules to give their children a quality education.

Bexley Superintendent Mike Johnson told the Columbus Dispatch his district hires investigators to follow about a dozen families per year that are suspected of cheating the district’s residency requirement, and claims the practice is necessary to ensure fairness for all.

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“How to I accommodate one and be fair to all?” Johnson questioned, adding that taxpayers “expect me to hold the rules even for everyone.”

Bexley and other school officials who spoke with the Dispatch would not discuss how much they pay for the investigations, but the news site confirmed that many in the area use professional investigators to look into parents.

The Bexley district’s attorney Gregory Scott said officials also listen closely to what students say in school, keeping their ear out for talk of long commutes or other comments that could expose parents who are breaking the rules.

Scott contends “there’s nothing nefarious” about following parents in public, and the agents doing to covert work in Bexley actually work for his law firm.

Unlike other areas of Ohio, Franklin County has few open enrollment school districts, meaning those who want to enroll their students in most area schools must live within the school district boundaries. Similar situations are common across the country, and schools using investigators to vet parents’ residency claims are also nothing new.

But some school district have become so obsessed with rooting out outsiders they now employ their own staff investigators to crack down on students seeking a better education.

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In the Licking Heights district, for example, the school district hired a part-time officer to crack down on school district border jumpers, and has successfully deported 59 students from the district last year, and another 22 students this year.

“For the first time, we’re seeing a significant downturn” in such cases, Licking Heights Superintendent Philip Wagner told the Dispatch. “We just want to make sure that we’re accountable to the taxpayers.”

In many places, holding parents accountable has meant jail, or a court order to repay tuition.

Last week, an administrative law judge upheld New Jersey Acting Commissioner of Education Kimberley Harrington’s decision to charge a parent for a year’s worth of tuition totaling $15,537 for allegedly using the address of a vacated residence to enroll her child in Ocean City schools, the Cape May County Herald reports.

That case followed a similar situation the year prior.

“In 2016 the separated parents of children attending the Branchburg School system were ordered to pay a year of tuition for their five children, amounting to around $55,000,” according to the news site.