42 students found themselves stranded in the US after a hotel apparently mistakenly destroyed their passports.
The teenagers at Barr Beacon School in Walsall were due to return home from a ski trip on Saturday but stayed four more days to obtain emergency documents.
One mother said she was initially shocked but was reassured by the school’s “phenomenal” response.
Director Katie Hibbs said she was proud of the staff working on the trip “to manage this very challenging situation”.
The group are now in New York on an impromptu sightseeing tour while sorting through documents through the British Embassy.
They previously resided at Kancamagus Lodge in Lincoln, New Hampshire, which was contacted by the BBC for a response.
Ms Hibbs told the BBC: “Forty-one of the passports were destroyed while the group stayed at the hotel in New Hampshire.”
She said the British embassy had completed their applications and they would be coming home on Wednesday.
The mother, who spoke to the BBC, declined to be named. She said the trip was a significant event for the students in grades 8 to 10 and had been canceled twice because of the Covid pandemic.
She was concerned for her teenage daughter after the parents received an email about the passport situation last week.
“It was really a terrible shock,” she said. “It’s the first time she’s been away from her family for so long. And what they did was really challenging – skiing black runs or blue runs depending on your experience.”
But she said the teacher leading the trip communicated well and was supportive of the students.
“She was up all night answering our emails and questions when she should have been asleep,” she said.
“The counseling and how they were cared for was so reassuring.”
She also commended Ms Hibbs, who immediately drew up a plan and made sure all parents filled out the required paperwork within 24 hours.
“The way the principal solved problems remotely was fantastic,” she said.
“She just communicated well with us and was really calm and really clear. She was just phenomenal.”
The mother said “luckily” her daughter had her cell phone and she was able to talk to her.
“The silver lining is that they can have an amazing experience, and I said, ‘just be present and enjoy,'” she said.
Students saw the city sights from the Staten Island Ferry and visited attractions like Central Park.
Ms Hibbs said the four New York staff would now be “supporting high school students exploring the city on a dwindling budget” and she looks forward to the party’s return.
A spokesman for the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office said: “Our staff are always on hand to support Brits in difficulty abroad and we have been in close contact with this school to help them. We are processing their emergency travel document requests so staff and children can return to the UK as soon as possible.”
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