If this had been done by the Trump Administration, the Editorial Board of The Philadelphia Inquirer, and far-left columnist Will Bunch would be screaming for a Special Persecutor Prosecutor to throw everyone in jail, but the Opinion section of the newspaper has nothing at all about this:

Students who moved out of the country were put back on Philly schools’ rolls

The reenrollment came just before an important funding deadline, as the district was grappling with lower-than-projected enrollment citywide.

by Kristen A Graham | October 6, 2026 | 5:01 AM EDT

Just before an important funding deadline, the Philadelphia School District reenrolled students who had been dropped from school rosters — students who, in some cases, had moved out of the country months prior, and have not attended a single class this year.

The move came as the district grapples with lower-than-projected enrollment citywide. District schools were 4,236 students under their projected enrollment as of Sept. 17, according to internal documents obtained by The Inquirer.

It follows an extraordinary push last month: Superintendent Tony B. Watlington Sr. had some school and central-office staff, including assistant superintendents, knocking on doors to try to get pupils back.

Then, last Wednesday, several principals said, schools received an email from the district’s office of student enrollment and placement saying that some students were added back to their rolls. Numbers varied, but these were often children who had moved out of state or out of the country, and in many cases, their families had informed the schools they would no longer attend.

Two paragraphs further down came the money line:

The email, which came the day before the Oct. 1 deadline for reporting enrollment to the Pennsylvania Department of Education for funding purposes, said the students had been “improperly dropped” and to actually remove a pupil from the school’s rolls, more documentation had to be provided.

Translation: the School District of Philadelphia was padding the numbers to get more money from the Commonwealth, from the taxpayers of Carbon and Lehigh and other counties, for students who were not there. How is that not criminal fraud?

Reporter Kristen Graham included several paragraphs noting that about 2,000 students were not in school and the potential reasons why: their families could have moved, the kids might have dropped out, or if some were in the country illegally they wanted to avoid Immigration and Customs Enforcement, but for whatever reasons, they simply were not there.

Superintendent Watlington said that real documentation was needed to know where the ‘missing’ students were, but he already knew where they were not: they were not in the city’s public schools. And with funding from the Commonwealth dependent in part on how many students are in school, how can this be anything but a fraudulent attempt to steal obtain more money?

Two more paragraphs from Miss Graham:

All the principals who spoke to The Inquirer described similar circumstances. All asked to remain anonymous because of the sensitive nature of the matter. . . .

“This is bad,” the second principal said. “They know those kids don’t exist. They’re doing this so we don’t lose the funding.”

In other words, the principals don’t want to lose their jobs, but they all know that fraud is being committed. “They’re doing this so we don’t lose the funding” doesn’t use the word fraud, but it certainly means that.

The state Attorney General needs to look into this, because District Attorney Larry Krasner certainly will not, and if criminality is found, some people need to go to jail.