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Tuesday, March 1, 2016

Ask the Ann Arbor School Board to Vote No on Tuition-Based Program

I was surprised--and not happily--to see this headline from the Ann Arbor News:

Tuition-based Program Would Bring Chinese Students to Ann Arbor High Schools.

The key things to know, from the article:

A new plan* proposed to the Ann Arbor Public Schools Board of Education Wednesday evening would place up to 200 students from China in the city's high schools each year...The district is considering a partnership with BCC International Education Group, a Chinese-American company that has already created similar programs bringing Chinese high school students to Dexter and Saline.
*This idea (or something quite similar) was actually discussed, and rejected, a few years ago in the Pat Green era.

Here's the letter I just sent to the school board. You can send emails to the school board at: boe@aaps.k12.mi.us.

Dear Board of Ed-- 

I'm writing to ask you to oppose the proposed contract with a firm to bring in up to 200 Chinese tuition-paying students. 
 
We already have at least two exchange programs in the schools--Youth for Understanding and AFS--both programs devoted to bringing students from around the world, including--among many other countries--China. Did you know that YFU started in Ann Arbor as an exchange program with Germany post-World War II? Or that AFS's origins lie in the aftermath of World War I with a similar goal of inter-cultural understanding?  
Ann Arbor also hosts the USA's U-18 hockey program.  
I'm not sure exactly how many students come through these three programs but I think it's something in the range of 100 students.  
All of these programs rely on host family volunteers, and it's not so easy to find them. I know intimately what is involved, because we hosted a student from Sweden last year and a student from Uruguay the year before, both with YFU. Both were great experiences but it does involve a fair bit of work, and (I know I'm repeating myself) it's not easy to find host families.  
I asked several families this year if they could take a student, and none of them felt they were in a position to do it. And, in fact, just today I got an email asking for a host family for a student who needs to leave his current family--and that happens too, sometimes, in the middle of the year. 
I do understand the desire to bring in money for the district, but I don't think this is a good way. And I would say this even if I hadn't heard, today, that the Oxford School District has had a very negative experience with this company.  
With the current exchange programs the student in my house brought in the same per-pupil funding as every other student in the district, thus adding to the district's census.  
I'm asking you to vote no on this. 
Best, 
Ruth Kraut


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5 comments:

  1. I heard recently that the U18 hockey team will be practicing in Canton area - I can't find confirmation on the website, but this could mean hockey players will attend Plymouth/Canton schools...

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  2. Ok - Found an article. They are practicing in Plymouth but most are still billeted in Ann Arbor: http://www.freep.com/story/sports/high-school/2015/09/06/usa-hockey-plymouth/71804750/

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    1. You are correct--Jeanice Swift let me know this morning that next year the U18 hockey students will be in the Plymouth-Canton school district. I think she said there are 44 of them, so that is a potential loss of 44 students.

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  3. I was checking around on the Michigan Board of Education web site and found this document. http://www.michigan.gov/documents/mde/foreign_students_3-06_ada_502433_7.pdf\
    It appears from this document that the Chinese students can either be charged tuition by a Michigan K-12 school OR they can be counted as resident students for the foundation allowance from the state of Michigan but NOT both. So the budget AAPS has put together is either a sham, or they will skirt the law and have BCC pay $10k tuition per student to the AAPS Foundation and then "granted" to AAPS for program overhead and more World Language teachers. In either case, exchange students and F-1 students who are not legally "residents" of the school district are limited by the State of Michigan Board of Education to 1 year (calendar year?) or less in K-12 public schools.

    Digging into the situation in Oxford a little deeper, the root of the failure of BCC's program there was that very few 12th grade students were ready for the college-level courses they needed to be "dual enrolled" and therefore eligible for F-1 visas through OCC or Oakland University. Not to mention that a business partner of BCC had built a dorm in Oxford to get around the lack of host families, but living together outside school hours meant the Chinese students didn't get enough practice with English.

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    1. The dual enrollment is a way to attempt to skirt the law. If the student is here a second year on a F1 visa they shouldn't be able to step foot in the high school. If they are in the high school working on a degree (diploma) they are high school students and violating the F1 visa.

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