2008 Jun 03: Agency dumps coordinators of foreign teens

FAYETTEVILLE : Agency dumps coordinators of foreign teens

BY ROBERT J. SMITH, Northwest Arkansas’ News Source, June 3, 2008

http://www.nwanews.com/adg/News/227602/

http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-179680062.html

“State Department investigators learned that EF Foundation failed to ensure that foreign exchange students had appropriate host families and homes before they arrived in the U. S.  The foundation also allowed some students to live in the Drummond home, a violation of federal regulations that forbid company representatives from serving as a student’s host family, State Department officials said.”

Complete story:

Education First Foundation of Foreign Study on Monday fired a Fayetteville couple in charge of finding host families for foreign exchange students arriving in Arkansas.

EF Foundation’s decision to fire Gerald and Sherry Drummond came hours after Fayetteville High School said that it will no longer accept foreign students brought to Arkansas by the Cambridge, Mass.-based company.

“They called us this morning and told us with the decision of Fayetteville High School that they were going to ask us to not work with them anymore,” Gerald Drummond said Monday. “I go with what they ask.

” We’re just ordinary nobodies, but I enjoy life and I enjoy meeting people. We get things written about us like we’re trying to take advantage of exchange students instead of it being a positive thing.”

Alan Wilbourn, the Fayetteville School District spokesman, said high school counselors spent too much time resolving difficulties encountered by EF Foundation students. That led to the decision to stop working with the company, he said.

“They’ve spent days handling living situations, and that’s supposed to be taken care of before they get here,” Wilbourn said.

The school district’s ban of EF Foundation students comes five months after the U. S. State Department began investigating EF Foundation’s Arkansas operation. The Drummonds accepted their first foreign exchange student as a host family eight years ago and eventually became the company’s Arkansas coordinators.

State Department investigators learned that EF Foundation failed to ensure that foreign exchange students had appropriate host families and homes before they arrived in the U. S. The foundation also allowed some students to live in the Drummond home, a violation of federal regulations that forbid company representatives from serving as a student’s host family, State Department officials said.

The findings in the State Department’s investigation, which involved six students at Fayetteville High School and one each at Fayetteville Christian School and Missouri Boulevard Baptist School, have not been made public.

Counselors and school administrators in Fayetteville interviewed by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in December said foreign students associated with EF Foundation felt isolated, scared and appeared to be malnourished.

Those characterizations are unfair, Gerald Drummond said Monday. He said there are students who lived in his home who remain in contact with him. Over the eight years, 14 foreign exchange students lived with the Drummonds, he said.

“I’m just sad to see it come to a crashing end,” he said. “We’re not the terrible people the world thinks we are.”

EF Foundation spokesman Ellen Manz wouldn’t say why the Drummonds were let go. A replacement hasn’t been selected. The company knew the Fayetteville school was considering banning EF Foundation students from enrolling, Manz said.

“Although this is a disappointing decision, it will not have a material impact on our program either in Arkansas or nationwide,” Manz writes in an e-mail. “We will certainly visit Fayetteville High School in the fall to discuss their experiences with EF, and see if we can give them the confidence in our program to consider accepting our students in 2009-10.”

Heather Slinkard, a Bella Vista woman who is area manager for a foreign exchange student company called Peace 4 Kids Inc., said EF Foundation’s troubles in Arkansas hurt the overall image of foreign exchange programs.

“They did give us all a black eye, but more than that, they hurt students,” Slinkard said.

State Sen. Sue Madison, DFayetteville, who wants the state to more closely monitor the placement of foreign exchange students at high schools, said she was pleased to hear the company fired the Drummonds.

“I’m happy to see EF take some firm action,” Madison said. “Maybe they’ll get somebody good.”

Copyright (c) 2001-2008 Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Inc.  All rights reserved.

Student Exchange Agency:  Education First Foundation of Foreign Study (EF)

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2007: Exchange Group Gets Probe After Teens Complain

2008 Jun 17: Lawmakers question foreign exchange procedures, legislation in the works

Posted on 17 June 2008

LITTLE ROCK – An attorney for a Cambridge, Mass.-based company that places foreign students in Arkansas high schools told lawmakers Tuesday he had no problem with the state having some oversight of firms like his, including a registration program.

At the request of Sen. Sue Madison, D-Fayetteville, legislative committees met to consider whether the state should oversee placement of foreign exchange students after Madison fielded complaints last year that some of the students were being placed with families ill-equipped to take care of them.

“I have no problem with a registering,” said Jeffrey Allen, attorney and board member of Education First Foundation of Foreign Study, told a joint meeting of the Senate Children and Youth Committee and the House Committee on Aging, Children and Youth, Legislative and Military Affairs.

Companies that place foreign exchange students with U.S. families are regulated by the U.S. State Department. California requires all companies active there to register with the California attorney general’s office, while Minnesota and Washington require the companies to register, but with some other state agency. Arkansas has no registration requirement.

When the Legislative Council approved Madison’s study proposal in December, the State Department was investigating complaints about placement of foreign students in Arkansas by Allen’s firm.

Earlier this month, after repeated problems with Education First, Fayetteville High School decided to no longer accept students provided by the company. The following day, the company fired the Fayetteville family hired to host the students during the school year.

The federal investigation into Education First and its Fayetteville coordinators centered on allegations that exchange students stayed at the homes of their coordinators, which is prohibited by federal regulations.

Allen acknowledged Tuedsay that four of the 87 foreign students his company brought to Arkansas last year were placed in difficult host family environments.

“We bring 2,700 kids, teenagers, into the United States every year, there are going to be issues,” Allen said. “Our job is to minimize them and to respond to them when they occur and to respond to them appropriately.”

Rep. Tracy Pennartz, D-Fort Smith, who suggested the screening process the company used to hire regional coordinators was flawed, said the state would be watching.

“So if you all have made errors or mistakes, what we’re interested in is that you revise your procedures and processes so that those same errors don’t occur again,” she said.

After the meeting, Madison said she plans to develop legislation for the 2009 regular session that would give the state some oversight of the placement companies, including a registration requirement.

During the two-hour meeting, Leigh Hudson, a counselor at Fayetteville High School, told lawmakers she got to know each of the four troubled foreign students last school year and each was upset and emotional over the problems they faced with their host families.

In one case, a student, who was Lutheran, was forced to go to the host family’s non-denominational church and was told she would lose her cell phone and computer privileges if she did not, Hudson said. Another student was upset because her host family’s home smelled of sewage because of plumbing problems, she said.

Also, several students lived with Gerald and Sherry Drummond, regional coordinators for Education First, against federal regulations. The company fired the Drummonds this month after Fayetteville High quit accepting foreign students through the company.

Matt Smith, Education First’s director of operations, told lawmakers Tuesday that after the problems with the four students the remaining 83 in the state were questioned and were determined to be happy and comfortable with their host families.

Smith estimated as many as 20 percent of foreign exchange students have to be moved to another host family during a school year because they are incompatible.

The Drummonds were invited to testify at Tuesday’s meeting but did not attend.

 

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2007 Dec 9: Exchange group gets probe after teens complain

2008: Agency dumps coordinators of foreign teens

2007/2008: Highly religious exchange family

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2014: Gerald and Sherry Drummond currently work for (CASE) Culture Academic Student Exchange South Central Region

Helpline US Department of State

1-866-283-9090 (24 hours a day, 7 days a week) The Department of State activated the helpline to ensure the health and safety of its exchange participants. Students have a right to be treated fairly and to report abuse without retaliation or threat of program cancellation. (Dep of State)

Blind trust in exchange organisations

You would not send your child to a house at the end of your street if you knew nothing about the person living there. Yet on the strength of a glossy brochure, the payment in some cases of vast sums of money, and an assumption that someone else has asked the right questions, we send our children thousands of miles across the world to stay with strangers.

The companies, organisations and individuals that abuse this blind trust cannot be allowed to continue to profit from it and we must all take responsibility for the care and safety of our young people. (Chris Gould)