Foreign students without forms

Principal Phillip Gainous met with International Student Administrations Office (ISAO) officials on May 16 to open Blair and ISAO communications and discuss incomplete or questionable records of some international students enrolled at Blair.

Assistant Principal Linda Wanner also attended the meeting and called it "very postive." Now, Blair can contact the ISAO regarding any questions about international students.

According to Gainous, international students have been enrolling in Blair without complete paperwork, including immunization records and residency proofs.

Blair officials said that they wanted to discuss questionable residencies and health records with the ISAO. Under an ISAO policy instated this year, Blair is forced to enroll every student the international office sends, according to Gainous.

Even with the school year coming to a close, about one student every other day is enrolling at Blair, said Priscilla Shub, head of enrollment. At the start of the semester, Shub says, three to four students, most of whom were international, enrolled per day.

ISAO supervisor Nivea Berrios believes that the ISAO does a thorough job of placing students into the proper home schools and checking students' paperwork before enrolling them in schools. "We don't treat international students differently from U.S. students. We verify transcripts, and we evaluate records from foreign countries," she said.

Despite Berrios' claims, international students still come to Blair without complete immunization records, said Gainous, and could endanger the health of the entire student body. "They've got to have immunization. We've had incidents in the past where a school was quarantined," he said.

According to social studies teacher Brian Hinkle, who worked at the MCPS Residency Compliance Office last summer, Blair needs to have a more active role in enrolling international students. "We need to have local control of basically who's in and out. If the paperwork is not proper, we should be able to say no," he said.

Currently, about 18,000 international students reside in Montgomery County, representing more than 164 countries. The ISAO processes about 6,000 enrollments per year, said Berrios.
International students comprise about one third of Blair's population, Gainous said.

According to Berrios, students from foreign countries first go to the ISAO, which checks records and transcripts from their home countries. Then, they get health forms and take tests to assess school placement. If students' forms are incomplete, they are placed into ninth grade at their home school regardless of their age until the proper paperwork is found. The ISAO verifies addresses by examining forms like rental leases or property tax bills.

According to Gainous, Silver Spring is a main staging area for immigrants, and Blair has been welcoming and sensitive to their needs. "We're not trying to keep them out. We're already bulging at the seams, and one more [student] isn't going to kill us. We just want to make sure they have the right paperwork," said Gainous.

The goal of the ISAO meeting was to "get all of us on the same page and communicate," said Gainous. Gainous wanted the ability to talk to the ISAO about student records to clarify any questions Blair has. Also, Gainous adds, a student should attend the "right school" and not remain "jammed" between ISAO and Blair disagreements.