By Jesse Serwer
Salters, the 47-year-old mother of a girl who briefly attended South Side High School in 2004, allegedly forged documents and risked her own arrest in order to get her daughter, whose name is being withheld, into Rockville Centre schools, according to the Nassau County district attorney's office.
Salters, whose driver's license says she lives in Hempstead but who investigators now believe actually resides in Rockville Centre's Old Mill Court housing complex, was arrested Monday by the D.A.'s Special Investigations Bureau for submitting a phony apartment lease at a nonexistent address to the Rockville Centre School District in April 2004. She was arraigned Monday, and charged with second-degree criminal possession of a forged instrument and second-degree falsifying of business records.
"In reality, neither Salters nor her daughter lived at the address noted in the document, and the document was wholly a fabrication submitted in an effort to deceive registration officials at the school district," said D.A. Denis Dillon.
Like many other school districts on Long Island and around the country, the district hires a private investigator to ensure that all students in its schools live within district boundaries and to investigate possible infractions. But given South Side's consistently high test grades, its ranking by Newsweek as the nation's 45th-best high school and the fact that it shares borders with significantly lower-performing districts, Salters' desperate attempt to get her daughter into a school here does not seem all that surprising.
"Clearly, people want to send their children here," said Rockville Centre's assistant superintendent, Eileen Kamhi. "The people here pay significant levels of property tax, and partly as a result of that we have wonderful schools. Our doors are open to legal Rockville Centre residents, but people need to go to schools in the district in which they live."
But while school-district investigations have often turned up nonresidents illegally attending Rockville Centre schools, this was, Kamhi said, "the first time we had someone who allegedly forged a legal document. Usually when we confront people with evidence that they don't live here, that is that."
Initially, Salters told the district that she and her daughter were living with an aunt at Old Mill Court, but the investigator found that the child was not living there. It was then, Kamhi said, that Salters met with her and submitted the lease for what turned out to be a nonexistent apartment at 4 Windermere Place. In addition to learning how easy it is to turn a blank lease into an authentic-looking one, Kamhi said, "We were able to use the Internet to trace the owner of 4 Windermere, who told us he never heard of them." It was then that the case was turned over to the D.A.'s office, which made the arrest Monday after an investigation lasting more than a year.
While the D.A.'s office identified Salters as having an address at 30 Old Mill Court, Rockville Centre Housing Authority Executive Director John Duenges said he is not aware of anyone by that name living in the Old Mill Court complex, and Kamhi said she is not aware of the woman's daughter, who would be entering her senior year of school next year, having been re-enrolled at South Side.
"If they are legally living here, she would be entitled to come to school here," Kamhi said. "But to the best of my knowledge, she is not registered here."
Comments about this story? JSerwer@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 221.
