ILLINOIS · ALSIP · SCHOOL RESIDENCY SURVEILLANCE
A school district used license-plate data and private investigation in a residency dispute; children were disenrolled.
Vehicle-location evidence + private surveillance → residency inference → children removed from school
Alsip · Cook County · IL
In 2026, NBC 5 Chicago documented Illinois school districts using license-plate-recognition data, commercial investigative databases and private investigators for student-residency verification. In one District 126 case, Tatiana Philips said she had been followed for months without knowing it. Records included photographs of her vehicles at work, at a mall, at her mother's home and behind her apartment.
The district concluded that the family did not reside within district boundaries and Philips' 6- and 11-year-old children were disenrolled. NBC subsequently interviewed Philips inside an apartment in Alsip, within District 126, where she said she had lived for nearly two years. The district declined to discuss the individual family because of student-confidentiality rules while defending its residency-verification process generally.
NBC surveyed 32 Chicago-area districts and reported that nine used license-plate readers; at least nine also acknowledged using private-investigation firms for residency verification or surveillance.
Sources: NBC Chicago — May 2026 investigation · NBC Chicago — August 2026 follow-up
This page preserves the anecdote and its caveats separately from the shorter Why Privacy Matters explainer. The goal is to keep the argument readable without hiding the receipts.