Thursday, September 02, 2010
Metro columnist Dan Casey: Culture comes at a price in Botetourt
JARED SOARES The Roanoke Times
Exchange student SoHyung Kim of Seoul, South Korea, enjoys afternoon craft time with her host mother, Angie Stroop (left), Stroop's daughter Brianna, 5, and Jessica Kealey of Germany (right), an exchange student who will stay with a family in Danville this fall. Stroop says it is cheaper to pay tuition for SoHyung to attend Parkway Christian Academy than to pay the nonresident tuition that exchange students must pay to go to Lord Botetourt High School — even though the Stroop family lives and pays taxes in the Botetourt County school district.
Dan Casey is The Roanoke Times' metro columnist.
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Everything was set when Angie Stroop prepared to host a foreign exchange student in her Botetourt County home last year.
The Council on International Educational Exchange, a 63-year-old nonprofit, assigned a teenage girl from the Czech Republic to live with Stroop.
Barbora Zachova's parents paid a fee to the council that covers travel, a student visa, health insurance, the necessary legal waivers for the student and expenses for the organization.
Zachova arrived here in late July and moved into Stroop's home near Read Mountain.
There was a single hitch: After all those arrangements had been made, Stroop discovered Botetourt County Public Schools would charge tuition for the girl to attend Lord Botetourt High School.
That's even though Stroop, 36, a licensed counselor, lives in the Botetourt district, and even though she and her husband pay real estate and other taxes in the county.
Botetourt County considered Zachova a nonresident "temporary" student. Virginia law allows school districts to charge such students tuition.
In Botetourt County's case, the fee is half the local share of the per-student cost of education.
That was about $2,700 last year, said Botetourt County schools Superintendent Tony Brads. A student who lived in Roanoke County and attended Lord Botetourt would pay the same, Brads said.
Stroop believes that's crazy. American students in the school benefit at least as much from having foreign students in their midst as the exchange student does by attending school here.
"They have the right to charge a nonresident fee for any temporary student," Stroop said. "They were in their legal rights to do it. It's just, I think, wrong."
Stroop noted that if she was a foster parent who took in a troubled child, the county couldn't charge a nonresident fee for that student -- even though foster parents get paid and families who host foreign exchange students through that program do not.
Stroop appealed the ruling to the Botetourt County School Board, but it was denied.
Stroop did not have to pay the tuition out of her own pocket, however. Instead it was split by the Council on International Educational Exchange and a related nonprofit organization.
The student's parents already had paid fees that can range up to $10,000, depending on the country the student is coming from and some other factors. The exchange program's administrators felt it was unfair to ask Zachova's parents for more after she already was here.
"It's very uncommon," said Judy Ross, the program's senior regional director. "Of the 1,400 students we placed last year [across the country], I only know of one such case, and it was this case."
The Council on International Educational Exchange placed 54 other students in Virginia schools last year. None had to pay nonresident fees.
It's also unusual in these parts. This week, I contacted school systems in Montgomery and Roanoke counties and the cities of Salem and Roanoke.
None of those schools charges nonresident fees for foreign exchange students with visas who are living with host families within their jurisdiction.
Brads said it has been Botetourt's policy to charge tuition at least since 2005, when he became superintendent. But he noted that there's a waiver process so that host parents don't end up getting stuck with the bill themselves.
"These agencies have paid before," Brads said. And one paid, "no questions asked," for the South Korean exchange student who's now attending Lord Botetourt, he noted.
Part of the problem, Brads added, is that Lord Botetourt is getting crowded. That's caused the school system to routinely deny "regular" nonresident placements from students who live in neighboring jurisdictions.
The policy also has cost Botetourt at least one other foreign exchange student this year.
That would be SoHyung Kim, who also hails from South Korea and who's now staying in the Stroops' home.
Angie Stroop enrolled SoHyung at Parkway Christian Academy on King Street Northeast, which her 5-year-old daughter already attends.
The cost is $1,870.
In part, the tuition is low because SoHyung gets a "second child" rate and the Stroops are members of a related church, the Parkway House of Prayer, Administrator Erica Dixon said.
Who would have thought a private school would be a lot cheaper than a public one?
