Children of domestic workers living with their employers during the week could attend school in the district where their parents work under a bill moving through the California Legislature. The measure passed its first committee vote Wednesday.
Miriam Storch couldn’t believe it.
Her local school district in Orinda, east of San Francisco, had just expelled her live-in nanny’s second-grade daughter.
Turns out the district sent a private investigator to the nanny’s mother’s home in a nearby city to prove her daughter didn’t meet the district’s residency requirements.
“We were shocked on so many levels,” Storch recalls after testifying before a legislative committee Wednesday.
She and her husband went public with the story. The district backed down. Now, a bill in the California Legislature, SB 200, would require school districts to accept students whose parents live with their employers at least three days each school week.
“To force domestic workers to be separated from their children during the week, it’s unacceptable – and this bill addresses that,” Storch says.
The measure’s supporters say this is a frequent problem.
The California School Boards Association says it has not yet taken a position on the bill, which now moves to another committee.
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