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Need students for your school? Import students from overseas!
Why didn't we think of this sooner? Mayor Munsterman of Brookings directs our attention to the Wausa, Nebraska, school district, where Superintendent Bob Marks decided to tackle declining enrollment by recruiting foreign exchange students. The plan brought eight students to Wausa this school year -- a pretty big deal in a high school whose total enrollment is 88.
The idea of recruiting foreign exchange students to raise enrollment follows the logic of a program I learned about last summer at the Meadowlark Project conversation here in Madison. Evidently Manitoba -- one of Canada's rural prairie provinces, with demographics much like South Dakota's -- has engaged in an aggressive campaign to recruit immigrants to replace its out-migrating rural populations and keep small towns alive.
Immigration built South Dakota -- immigration could be what keeps our schools and towns alive.
What’s going on at Dakotanews?
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On Monday ‘KSFY’ posted this job ad; I have been suspicious for awhile that
the experiment they are running at DN will hit aground. Over the past
couple of...
1 day ago
That's like putting a bandaid on a blown artery. Simply putting off the inevitable. If you're bringing in foreign exchange students for the cultural and educational benefits of all students, and a side-benefit is the additional funding, that's one thing, but to bring in foreign students or immigrants simply to stall the closing of your school and demise of your town, that's desperation, not education.
ReplyDeleteThere was a time when the residents of Lead figured the place was destined for oblivion.
ReplyDeleteWith the prospect of the Sanford Lab out of idle dreamland (and into active dreamland), and considering that many of the world's leading physicists come from other countries, and with talk of a technical school to go with the lab, the possibility of foreign exchange students coming here is quite real.