School District’s Student Exchange Program on Hold for Now

It turns out the roughly 20 South Korean exchange students, who had been scheduled to arrive in Fort Lee next week, won’t be coming after all—at least not this month.

Fort Lee Superintendent of Schools Raymond Bandlow said the planned exchange is being put on hold for the time being as school officials reevaluate the details of the program that would have also sent about 20 Fort Lee High School sophomores and juniors to study for a month in Korea in July. Bandlow declined to offer further details, saying only, “it takes more time to do.”

“That was our first goal [to have to the Korean students arrive this month] to see if it was possible to do that,” Bandlow said. “But as we’ve gotten further along, I think we clearly need to do more study, and we clearly need to do more preparation. I don’t want to do that unless or until we’re ready to do it well.”

As recently as two weeks ago, school officials were preparing for their foreign visitors, who were set to arrive on Jan. 26. The district even went as far as posting a call on its website for local families willing to provide home stays for them.

The student exchange program, in which Fort Lee was to send 20 students to Korea this summer, is part of Fort Lee High School's new sister school agreement with Seokang High School in Kwangju, South Korea. The partnership was forged during Bandlow's recent visit to Korea.

The exchange is part of the Fort Lee School District's "First in the World" initiative, offering Fort Lee students and teachers the opportunity to study in Korea and Fort Lee families the opportunity to host visiting Korean students and teachers through partnerships with some of Korea's top public and private schools.

The school district estimates that about 40 percent of students in Fort Lee schools are of Korean descent and that more than half are of Asian descent, including smaller groups of Japanese, Chinese and others. Kids in the district speak an estimated 60 different languages, and many speak a language other than English at home.

In December, Bandlow said the program is all about instilling a sense of "global competition" in Fort Lee students, something he said he believes is lacking.

But for now, that’s going to have to wait.

“I don’t think we can do everything we need to do, and do it well, by the end of January,” Bandlow said. “We’re going to reconsider what the appropriate timeframe is.”