Who pays for foreign exchange students education?
The typical foreign exchange student pays several thousand dollars in fees to be a part of a student exchange program. Yet in most cases, none of those fees go to the school district in which they’re educated, or to the families who host the students. So where do local school districts get the money to educate these students, and where do the fees paid by the students go? According to Arrowhead Superintendent Craig Jefson, foreign exchange students are included in the official student counts used to determine how much money the school gets from the state. Therefore, as far as funding goes, the costs to educate them come from local and state taxpayers, just like a student who resides in the district. Jefson said that exchange programs benefit not only the foreign student, but also the rest of the regular student body. Students in an AHS social studies class recently participated in a video-conferencing discussion of global issues with students in India, set up through an Indian exchange
