Ohio mom jailed for seeking better school for her kids

Kelley Williams-Bolar of Akron, Ohio, just wanted a good education for her children. The school district in which she and her two daughters lived was typical of the many impoverished, crime-ravaged districts across the country which poor families are forced to attend. Her home had been burglarized 12 times.

So Williams-Bolar enrolled her girls in the nearby Copley-Fairlawn district, where her father lived.

It's a toss-up whether what happened next is a result of money-hungry union and school officials, or is due to lingering racism in the South-adjacent Ohio.

After the girls attended school in the Copley-Fairlawn district for two years, the district hired a private investigator who videotaped Williams-Bolar, who is black, driving into the mostly white district to take her girls to school. The district then demanded Williams-Bolar pay it $30,000, the alleged cost of the schooling the girls had received without Williams-Bolar paying taxes in the district. Williams-Bolar, who lives in government-subsidized housing, refused to pay.

Superintendent Brian Poe then contacted the district attorney, and Williams-Bolar was sentenced this month to two consecutive five-year sentences for felony falsifying records. Judge Patricia Cosgrove reduced that to 10 days in jail, with 80 hours of community service and three years' probation. Because of the conviction, Williams-Bolar will not be able to earn her teaching degree, which she had been working toward.

The case has upset a lot of people, including the judge, who was angered that the prosecutors would not consider decreasing the charges to misdemeanors.

"The way I look at it is, the bottom line, you need to follow the law," Poe said. The superintendent denies that Williams-Bolar was singled out because she's black.


Williams-Bolar was released Wednesday.

The kicker? Since Williams-Bolar has been jailed, the two girls have been living with their grandfather, in the school district where they attended for two years, but are now forced to go to school elsewhere.

As homeschoolers can appreciate, Williams-Bolar's case points out how fragile parents' rights to educate their children truly are when confronted by an uncaring bureaucracy. With more pressure in many states to cut budgets, school districts are going to be more inclined to fight over tax dollars, and the first people to be trampled on in the scramble may be parents.