D.C. school officials want families to immediately start submitting proof for next school year that they live in the District.

State Board of Education members are slated to consider tonight an emergency request from the public schools chancellor’s office to push up the date when residency verification starts coming in.

According to an inspector general audit performed earlier this year, D.C. Public Schools spent nearly $3 million between October 2006 and March 2007 to educate students with questionable residency status.

Auditors found that, especially in the case of pricey, out-of-state special education placements, education officials were not properly checking student residency.

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Beverly Wheeler, spokeswoman for the state board, said the rules in place now set the span when families must show where they live as beginning in July and ending in October.

The proposal would start the process now in hopes of getting verification completed before classes let out this month.

“The idea is to allow parents the opportunity to enroll and verify earlier rather than wait until July,” said Mafara Hobson, Chancellor Michelle Rhee’s spokeswoman.

Since the emergency request came on Monday, it’s unclear whether there will be enough state board members around to push the measure through, Wheeler told The Examiner.

“We had on our schedule to begin conversations about this in July ... but this was just pushed forward,” she said.

According to D.C. code, to be eligible to go to D.C. public schools, students must prove their residency every year using any one of a number of documents as verification, including a court order showing they are a ward of the District.

Anyone who knowingly provides false information about this can be subjected to a $300 penalty or 90 days in jail, the code states.

dlevitz@dcexaminer.com