Chamblee’s budding Essen Exchange Program has been killed in its infancy, and as a result, students from Essen, Germany will no longer be coming to Chamblee Charter High School this year.

In order to protect DeKalb County School District from liability issues, the county sent out documents transferring liability from it to the students and families involved. Although liability forms seem very normal to Americans, they are almost unheard of in Germany, and the German school district was unable to legally sign the documents.

“There are issues with the Germans because the rules and regulations are different than they are here,” said German teacher Uwe Neuhaus, “and the county or district in Germany is not responsible for these exchanges, and could not legally sign the documents that the county sent them.”

All in all, the reason for the cancellation ultimately boils down to liability.

“The whole thing is about risk and liability,” said Neuhaus. “The county wants to minimize the […] risk that they can, so they created documents that, if you sign it, you waive any right to sue the county for anything.”

An alarming aspect of this situation is the county’s seemingly negligent attitude towards how this exchange impacted students and what the program entailed.

“I understand the county’s rationale, but I don’t get the feeling that they really care about us because even when we were in the third meeting, they still did not know anything about the exchange program,” said Neuhaus. “They still confused the exchange program with a year long exchange student at our school.”

Unlike the older Nuremberg exchange program, which first began in 1999, the Essen exchange was founded in 2016 and focused more on the school experience.  

“It is a true school exchange,” said Neuhaus. “That means that the major focus here is on the school experience. It is the experience to spend time in the classrooms.”

The Nuremberg exchange, which was supposed to take place in summer 2018, was previously cancelled last school year, in order to help foster the development of the Essen exchange.

In addition, Neuhaus does not know if Chamblee students will be able to head to Germany in June as part of the Essen exchange. Whether they can go is dependent on whether the county can find an third-party company willing to facilitate the trip there.

“The county is looking for a third party vendor that would have to come and take over the trip basically,” said Neuhaus, “which has its own issues, namely that it becomes 40% more expensive and that there will be requirements that we will not want to meet.”

One such exchange company, German-American Partnership Program, or GAPP, has requirements that range from having to spend a minimum of ten days in school to being unable to travel around the host country, and many others have similar regulations.

“I am pretty much convinced that they will not find a company or vendor that would be willing to work for us or is capable to work for us based on their rules and regulations,” said Neuhaus.

Unfortunately for all students involved with the Essen exchange, they had already been connected to their exchange partners when they were notified of the cancellation on September 12, about a month before the German partners were supposed to come.

“My exchange partner and I contacted each other over email and on Snapchat, Instagram, and WhatsApp,” said tenth grader Brenna Turner. “We became super close over a span of just a few weeks. I’d snapchat her every day and we’d talk about anything and everything.”

Turner had also already begun to plan excursions for her and her exchange partner around Atlanta.

“It just makes me sad when I think about how much fun we would’ve had,” said Turner. “We had already planned to go to Netherworld, which Lynn was indescribably excited about.”

Sophomore Debbie Kitzler had also begun connecting with her exchange partner at the time of the announcement.

“We had exchanged many emails and even had a Snapchat streak and were making plans of things to do when it was cancelled,” said Kitzler.

Because Chamblee students participating in the exchange were not going to go to Germany until the summer, they had luckily not made any payments besides paying for a background check which they should be reimbursed for.

“[Dekalb County School District] had required that each parent get a background check, which the coordinator said we would be reimbursed for, but I haven’t heard anything since,” said Turner. “They sent the email three days before we were supposed to make a major payment for the trip.”

Despite the cancellation, Turner continues to talk with her exchange partner

“We still talk regularly,” said Turner, “but it’s kind of a bitter reminder that we may never meet.”