Culture comes at a price in Botetourt
0 Comments | Roanoke Times & World News, Sep 2, 2010 | by Dan Casey
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