Foreign exchange students allowed back in some Cleveland schools for 2021 school year

Students returning to the classroom has reopened doors for foreign exchange students to come and experience northeast Ohio, and coming to America has also presented unique opportunities that stretch beyond the classroom for some students.

In a crowd of people watching Lakewood high school's band practice Tuesday evening was a new classmate and friend, who heard the play for the first time.

“I’m from Egypt,” foreign exchange student Shahd Abouelmadd said.
Abouelmadd has been in Cleveland for one week, and is days away from starting tenth grade at Lakewood High School.

She is one of nine foreign exchange students in the greater Cleveland area hosted by the AFS Intercultural Program, and one of two students at Lakewood High School that are part of the Kennedy-Lugar Youth Exchange and Study program (YES), that is funded by the U.S. Department of State.

The program was designed to deepen trust between the U.S. and people from countries of strategic importance.

“Each school individually has to accept a foreign exchange student,” Abouelmadd’s host mom, Jenni Barnett Rohrs, said.

“On day one, we picked her up from the airport, I think she took a power nap and then we were off to the local CVS to get her first of the two shots,” Abouelmadd’s host dad, Jeffery Rohrs, said.

Due to the pandemic, foreign exchange students haven't been allowed.
Abouelmadd told 3News she’d been waiting for the call she could come and learn in the U.S. for nearly a year.

“Because of the pandemic, we might travel, might not,” Abouelmadd said.