Schools

Superintendent Denies Request to Enroll Hosted Student

Schilder says current enrollment a concern, all requests have been denied over last five years.

A parent has asked the district to accept into the school system a foreign exchange student being hosted in Bridgewater—but Superintendent of Schools Michael Schilder has denied the request because of concerns of overcrowding.

According to Schilder, he has denied all requests over the last five years to enroll students into the schools who are being hosted by Bridgewater residents.

“I’ve said no because of our enrollment crunch,” he said. “We just went through our strategic plan and are in the throes of it, having to use the auditorium for classrooms and still undergoing increased enrollment.”

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“Based on that, I’ve said no to people who’ve asked,” he added.

Schilder said he has also said no to requests from parents who don’t actually live in the community, even when they offer to pay the tuition to enroll the student.

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“That’s attractive because of the money that comes in,” he said. “But with having to search for space, the logic was we don’t accept students who are not entitled to go here unless we have the room.”

As Schilder said, the district is already seeing class sizes in the high school in the high 20s and low 30s.

“So how can we really justify adding students to the classes if we don’t have to?” he asked.

Schilder said the only circumstance in which he does allow for foreign exchange students to be enrolled in the district is through four board of education endorsed exchange programs—the academic French exchange, German, Latin and a social studies exchange program with England.

“We do these programs every other year, and 20 to 40 of our students go there and 20 to 40 of the overseas students come here,” he said. “Basically we switch kids for about three weeks.”

“Those are the formal exchange programs that we take part in, and have for a long time,” he added.

Basically, Schilder said, these programs are about a direct switch, rather than adding new people.

“It’s not that we don’t think the extra enrollment is valuable, it’s just that we’re in an enrollment problem now,” he said.

For Schilder, there is a difference between an exchange and a host, which is what the request from the individual parent is.

“These are parents who have been contacted and said they would love to host,” he said. “But there is no actual exchange.”

“The four programs I had mentioned are true exchanges, and that was another reason I opted to say no,” he added. “Once we say yes to one hosting, we really have to set a policy.”

The request came through an appeal to the board from Schilder’s original decision to deny the enrollment request. The board of education opted Aug. 23 to support his decision.


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