Dispute over residency keeps student out of school for 2 years
Jun 30, 2009 12:55 PM
From The Washington Post: Jeff Sukkasem is a U.S. citizen and legal resident of Montgomery County, Md., with a passport, a library card and a volunteer job at a local Thai Buddhist temple. For the past two years, however, he essentially has been barred from public school. But until this week, the school district refused to allow him to attend classes unless he paid tuition as a out-of-district resident. Jeff, 14, had not set foot in a classroom since March 2007, when he left his mother and sister in the Bangkok suburbs and flew to the United States to live with family friends. The soft-spoken teen says he is here to resume his American life. But school officials regarded him as a visitor, sent to an affluent Washington suburb to attend its superior public schools. Now, in the face of mounting publicity, the Montgomery school system granted Jeff admission to Walter Johnson High School in Bethesda as a regular student, free of charge.
