School districts are turning to increasingly invasive tactics to police where families live, from license plate reader cameras to private investigators conducting surveillance, an NBC 5 Responds investigation uncovered.
Picture this: It’s just after sunrise on a cool September school day. A camera zooms in on a quiet suburban home as three children walk out the front door. What they don’t know is someone is watching, and they’ve been watching for months.
That’s reality for Pamela Guzmán and her children, who were recorded outside of Guzmán’s mothers’ home in Lyons and outside her own home in Brookfield.
“Whenever I go out, I have to look around me, like, is someone watching me? It just scares me,” Guzmán said.
Documents and surveillance videos obtained by NBC 5 Responds reveal LaGrange School District 102 hired private investigators to follow the Guzmán family several times over the past three years.
In emails between Guzmán and the district, district administrators tell the single mother they didn’t believe she lives in her Brookfield home and therefore her kids are not eligible to attend the schools they’ve been going to.
Guzmán said she didn’t know she’d been under surveillance until the videos surfaced during her residency hearing with the district in March.
“I was just shocked honestly, and I said okay, well, you guys are welcome to come visit,” Guzmán said.
Guzmán and her four children live in the garden apartment of a multigenerational family home.
“I’ve been here for five years,” she said.
But Guzmán says spends much of her time caring for her mother, who lives nearby in Lyons.
“My mom’s sick. My mom actually is Stage 4 cancer at the moment, and I’m a single parent of four. Wherever I go, my kids go with me,” Guzmán said.
Guzmán says caring for her mother often kept her and her children at her parents’ home. She believes the residency investigation began after her sister mentioned those visits to a teacher, a comment the sister now says the district misunderstood.
“After the kids got out of school, what we do is we take them to my mom’s house. We eat all together there, spend time together as a family, and then come back here,” Guzmán said.
District records show the family was first investigated and surveilled by private investigators in 2023, but that case was deemed “unfounded.”
Two years later, the district reopened the case, sending private investigators back to watch the family. School records show the latest investigation cost taxpayers $8,300.
This isn’t an isolated case. An NBC 5 Responds investigation uncovered dozens of suburban school districts using surveillance, from license plate reader cameras to private investigators, to determine who gets to attend their schools.
The motivation? Money.
Districts spend roughly $20,000 a year per student, and every student found to be ineligible is one less student they have to pay to educate.
But even when evidence suggests districts get it wrong, children may still be removed from the public education they’re entitled to, and the appeal process can be challenging without an attorney.
“I hope that they could see that we’re not lying, that the kids could go back to school. That’s all I’m hoping for. I just really wish that my kids could finish school, and hopefully they’re not behind,” Guzmán said.
Despite hiring an attorney to represent her, the district ultimately ruled in March that Guzmán and her children were “non-residents,” ordered them to leave the district immediately, and charged tuition for the months the children had attended school.
“My kids were unfortunately escorted out from school. My kids have asked me, ‘Is it my fault? Did I say something? Did I do something I wasn’t supposed to say?'” Guzmán said.
In their report, the private investigators said surveillance footage never showed Guzmán entering or exiting the Brookfield home.
But NBC 5 Responds found a problem with that conclusion. The video taken by the private investigators focused on the front door of the home. Guzmán lives in the garden apartment, which has its own entrance behind a gate on the other side of the corner property.
“So why didn’t they see us here? Because [the side door] is where we usually get out from. We’re right here, you know?” Guzmán said.
Guzmán says being forced to leave school has taken a heavy toll on her children, especially her autistic son.
“Now it’s just like, he screams, he yells, he doesn’t have a routine anymore, like he had one. He doesn’t have that structure that he needs right now. My youngest daughter, I know that she’s feeling depressed and she’s always telling me, ‘Mom, I don’t have friends like I used to. I don’t talk to anybody like I used to. All I want to do is sleep’,” said Guzmán.
In an email, District 102 Superintendent Chris Covino told NBC 5 Responds that Illinois law requires the district to verify where students live and that it uses everything from public records to private investigators when residency is questioned. The district says families have the right to challenge those decisions through an independent hearing process. Covino did not comment specifically on Guzmán’s case due to student confidentiality laws.
“I would wish for my kids to finish school. That’s what I want,” Guzmán said.
Guzmán submitted enrollment paperwork with district 102 for the upcoming school year. But she says she’s still waiting for District 102 to decide whether her children can return to their classrooms this fall.
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