An administrator told Ginger Rosetta that she couldn't finish her senior year at Westminster High School if education was the only reason she was living in Carroll County.
But Ginger wonders what better reason there could be.
"He really confused me when he said that's not a good reason," said the ambitious honor student and cheerleader. "I like going to school."
Honors, grades and money don't count: In public schools, residency is the biggest factor that determines whether a student can attend. The criteria in each county vary, but districts such as Baltimore and Carroll counties won't let out-of-county students attend just because they like the schools there.
Ginger has lived in Westminster since the fifth grade and has a job at a local grocery store. But her mother moved to Virginia last summer to find work, agreeing to let Ginger stay with friends in Westminster. Crystal Rosetta didn't realize her new address would be an issue. She gave it to school officials in September, and they declared that Ginger was no longer entitled to go to public school in Carroll.
Ginger sat home for six school days until lawyer Charles Hollman convinced officials that she was a valid county resident and had a right to stay at Westminster High.
Officials in Carroll and other counties are spending more time than ever hearing appeals from parents who want their children to go to a particular school system.
"From mid-August to Thanksgiving, there's not one day when I don't deal with one of these cases," said Richard Simmons, pupil-personnel worker in Carroll. "Every case is an exception, or wouldn't be here."
Anita Mostow, coordinator for alternative programs in Montgomery County Schools, said, "It's extremely time-consuming." She hears all the appeals, about 1,000 a year: "And that's just the ones we have questions about."
While many parents are honest, Mr. Simmons said, others try to get away with bogus residences, coaching their children about what address to give.
"There are people who teach their children to cheat, steal and lie," he said.
Howard County officials are trying to crack down on parents who lie about where they live. The county spends nearly $800,000 educating students from outside the county who have a valid reason for living with foster parents or relatives there.
There's no way to know the cost of undetected cases of fraud, said Peter Finck, supervisor of pupil services.
Parents have been known to procure an apartment lease, show it to school officials in the summer, but never move in, Mr. Finck said.
This year, Howard officials told parents up front that they would check in 60 days to make sure they were really in the apartments. Still, about a dozen so far have been found not to be living at the addresses they gave, Mr. Finck said.
Baltimore County schools allow out-of-county students to attend and pay tuition for two reasons: an academic program they want is not available in their home district, or a family situation in which the child has to live with friends or relatives who are residents.
Carroll has particularly stringent standards, requiring a compelling family reason.
Neither of the divorced parents of one boy could care for him, and he went to live with grandparents in Westminster. Carroll schools let him attend even before the formal guardianship papers were drawn up.
Hurricane Andrew devastated another family's home in Florida, and the children went to Carroll to go to school. Officials did not charge tuition in those cases.
"Some of the stories are heart-rending," said Edwin Davis, director of pupil services in Carroll County Schools, the man who said no to Ginger until she appealed.
"People have all kinds of reasons to try to escape what they're in -- shootings from rooftops," Mr. Davis said. Some families who feel the inner-city schools their children attend are unsafe try to have them live with relatives or friends in suburban counties, he said.
"It is sometimes a very delicate balance, and it's all not so clear," Mr. Hollman said of cases where parents' compelling reasons clash with school rules. "It's not that there's some bad group of people trying to come here and go to school, and there's not an evil group of people trying to stop them from doing that."
When Mr. Davis says no to a family, they can appeal to the superintendent, then to the local school board, then to the state board. The appeals are closed, unless the parent requests they be open. Few appeals go as far as the state board.
The gray areas are many. In some cases, the home sits right on a county line, and it comes down to which county the child's bedroom is in, Mr. Davis said.
Or the child has two bedrooms, for example, when parents are divorced.
"We like to say if one parent lives in Frederick and one parent lives in Carroll, 'Where does the kid put his head down on the pillow?' That's where we start," Mr. Davis.
Sometimes children have to put their head down on a pillow outside the county, but temporarily.
Sharon White's six children missed about a month of school before their mother could renew a waiver to allow them to continue their schooling in Carroll. The family house in Carroll County had burned down, and it took the single mother two years to secure a loan to complete repairs. She was living with her brother in Reisterstown, and school officials had begun to doubt her ability to move back.
In another case, Rose and Charles Frase moved a quarter-mile over the line into Baltimore County while building a new house in Manchester. It took them longer than they expected, and they were charged tuition for their two children.
Many parents are willing to pay tuition. Most counties in the area allow that, as long as there is room in the school, but Carroll and Baltimore counties do not unless there's a compelling family reason.
It goes against the principle of public education, said Baltimore County Pupil Personnel Director Nancy Foulk. "Why would we, as a public institution, allow you to do it [attend and pay tuition], when you have the same situation as someone in Baltimore City who is poor?"
In all counties, children may attend tuition-free while their parents live elsewhere, if a family problem requires them to live with a relative or friend. Schools require legal guardianship or caretaker agreements.
Crystal Rosetta said the legal papers may have been the missing piece in her daughter's case.
Had the county not accepted her appeal, she said, she was prepared to quit her job, leave her ailing mother and move back to Westminster, somehow. Ginger finishing her senior year at Westminster is the priority, she said.
Her daughter has big plans. She wants to go to Carroll Community College, transfer to Towson State University to become a teacher, or maybe a psychiatrist.
"I told her, 'Honey, by the time you're a psychiatrist, I'll need you every day,' " Ms. Rosetta said.