Using a variety of aliases and forged paperwork, Shelby Hewitt managed to worm her way into three different Boston schools over the last 10 months.

A Pro and a Con

For Shelby Hewitt, a Boston social worker in her 30s, posing as a teenage foster kid was easy. The question is: Why would anyone want to go back to high school?

By John Glatt

Photo Illustration by Chop Choppish Shop

On Thursday, June 8, with just two weeks remaining in the 2023 school year, the 13-year-old foster child Ellie Alessandra Blake was enrolled as a seventh-grade student at the English High School, in Boston’s Jamaica Plain neighborhood.

Ellie’s foster parents had arrived at the Boston Public Schools Welcome Center with signed papers from a Department of Children and Families (D.C.F.) social worker confirming Ellie was in foster care—which, under federal law, mandated that the center immediately place her in a school.