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Can a parent 'steal' an education for their child?Parents face prosecution for sending child to school beyond their neighborhood.

By GLORIA ROMERO / Register columnist

In, "Les Miserables," Victor Hugo's classic novel, a man is sentenced to prison for five

years for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his family.

Today, in Montgomery County, Pa., a couple is facing up to seven years imprisonment for

"stealing" an education for their child.

As incredible as it seems, is this a modern-day, American "Les Miserables"?

Prosecution and defense lawyers were in court last week in what has become the most-

watched education-related trial in the nation. It figures to affect parents across the nation.

Could something similar happen in California?

Hamlet and Olesia Garcia were arrested and charged with "theft of education services" forhaving enrolled their 5-year-old daughter, Fiorella, in a school outside their approved local

education-agency boundary. The Garcias had temporarily separated, with Mrs. Garcia

taking the child to live with her and her father in Montgomery County not far from the

Garcias' Philadelphia-area home. The couple soon reconciled, but decided to keep their

child in the Montgomery County school until the end of the term in June so as to not

further disrupt her life.

The Pennsylvania Penal Code contains a "theft of services" statute. Legal experts,

however, said the statute is intended to prosecute such offenses as stealing cable boxes or

utility services.

"I have never seen anything like this," commented the Garcias' attorney, Ricardo Corona.

"Anybody that would try to bring charges against a father here using the guise of a statute

more designed to stop cable piracy would probably be laughed out of court. The statute

doesn't fit."

And yet, a family from the city of Brotherly Love find itself in court, facing an ambitious

prosecutor, who many believe has eyes on higher elected office under a "law and order"

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platform. It's not lost on the Garcias' supporters that the Montgomery County school in

which the child was enrolled is affluent and almost entirely Caucasian. Graduating seniors

from the district often enroll at Harvard or Penn.

Statistics show that approximately half of all marriages end in divorce, preceded by a

separation. Are we willing to sanction school districts to use public funds to hire privateinvestigators in order to investigate separated couples? Where's the ACLU?

Public school students in California are generally assigned to schools by ZIP code. For

families trapped in a chronically underperforming school, attempts are sometimes made to

find an exit routeperhaps by claiming the student resides with a relative who lives in a

higher-performing district.

Jerry McGuire, legal staff for the California Senate Public Safety Committee, believes that

a Garcia-type prosecution would be difficult here, because legislators have enacted specific

types of theft-of-services offenses over the years, which have not included education. These

include such felonies as theft of phone lines, utilities, even the defrauding of an innkeeper.The Legislature's silence on "education theft," when other types of theft have been

delineated, likely could be argued as intentional, stymieing prosecution under theft

statutes.

In the meantime, the Garcia case grinds along. Corona said he chose to defend the Garcias

because, like Mr. Garcia, he is a Cuban immigrant, who came to America in 1960. "We

weren't wealthy, but I learned that, whatever you have, can be taken away. But the one

thing that couldn't be taken was your education."

"This is America. It shouldn't happen here," Corona said.

Register opinion columnist Gloria Romero is an education reformer and former

Democratic state senator from Los Angeles. Twitter: @DFER_CA