02/06/2026
Parkland High School’s senior class president is an Arabic speaker who speaks of her parents’ immigration stories as if she was telling the story of how her favorite theater performer came to earn a starring role.
When she leads Parkland’s 800-plus senior class to their graduation Wednesday, Angelina Zaiter will be thinking about what it took for all of those students and their families to make it to that milestone. Of all the achievements on her packed resume, Zaiter said Class of 2026 president is the leadership role she loves because it’s meant the opportunity to unite worlds.
Zaiter’s worlds include theater, choir, debate team, Law Club and student government. Teachers who’ve worked with Zaiter said her wide-ranging talents start, but don’t end, in the classroom.
Maureen Kautzmann, Parkland’s social studies department chair who is in her first year as the Law Club adviser, said Zaiter “flourished” in her Advanced Placement Psychology course junior year.
“Angie is a true renaissance woman,” Kautzmann said via email. “She is not only a leader in the classroom, but in every club she is involved with as well as the class president. She then takes her talent to the stage, where she can sing, dance and act with the best. Her versatility and passion will be an asset as she paves her way in her professional career.”
Zaiter spoke to The Morning Call while being driven to rehearsal for the Freddy Awards, for which she was nominated for Outstanding Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role for playing Smitty in Parkland’s “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.”
Madelynn Wascura, one of the four Parkland theater students who was carpooling with Zaiter, called her “the most responsible, kindest person.”
Wascura has known Zaiter since the two were 7 years old.
“I respect her so much,” Wascura said, “I’m so lucky to be one of her best friends.”
Zaiter handles her packed schedule of academics, arts and student leadership in a way that makes it all look easy, Wascura said, but her friend also knows how much work it takes for Zaiter to pull off that balancing act.
“It seems like she always has time for everything, even though she always stays up late,” Wascura said.
Preparing for a law career
Zaiter has been a member of the varsity debate team since her sophomore year.
“We have been so lucky to have her — her energy, initiative, and grace under pressure has been inspiring for the team these past years,” Parkland English teacher and debate team adviser Jennifer Smith said via email.
“She has an incredible mind for logic, detail, and scope, as well as an ability to speak in a way that commands the room. Angie was the first speaker for the Parkland team that won EPC Debate Finals this year, and reflected in that win is Angie’s skill to put forth and defend an argument and hold her ground in questioning. She has been a wonderful role model for her fellow debaters, and I believe that she has a bright future ahead of her in law.”
Zaiter said she doesn’t yet know what kind of law she wants to practice. Her interests range from international and immigration law to criminal justice. The overall theme is that she wants to “hold groups and entities accountable for things that they often get away with,” Zaiter said.
Law is a family legacy for Zaiter. Her father, John, is an attorney.
John Zaiter’s path into law was challenging, Angelina said. Her grandfather was a hardworking student but only completed schooling through the fifth grade, she said. That meant that when it came time for John Zaiter to apply to college, his father didn’t have a reference for what the process would be.
John Zaiter took classes at Lehigh Carbon Community College and then transferred to West Chester University. As soon as he enrolled in a criminal law class, his father started telling everyone that his son was going to be a lawyer, Angelina said.
That parental excitement pushed John Zaiter to go from dipping a toe into criminal law to completing law school and then passing the bar in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. He drives an hour and a half into New Jersey most work days, Angelina said, saying his work has spanned the gamut of criminal and civil litigation, with work done for corporate, municipal and school clients.
“He does it all,” Angelina said, before laughing and saying immigration-related law, one of her potential specialties, is not an arena her father has waded into.
John Zaiter is a “huge role model of mine,” Angelina said, noting that she loves to argue as much as her father does.
Zaiter was born in Allentown but was still a baby when the family moved to the Schnecksville section of North Whitehall Township.
Her father immigrated to the United States when he was 2 years old. He met and married Razan during a time when he was back in Syria. She was in her final year of architecture school when she decided to get married and raise her children in the United States.
That was 2007, four years before the Syrian civil war began. Angelina said her mother was on her way to becoming an architect in Syria, noting how difficult it was to be a woman attempting to break into that high-status occupation.
As a 21-year-old, Razan made the decision to prioritize marriage and family, choosing to “make sure her kids were raised in a place that was safe and boundless in opportunity,” Angelina said.
Razan Zaiter faced an issue many professionally qualified immigrants face: Certifications don’t always transfer across international borders. Diplomas aren’t always recognized. Sometimes you have to start over. Sometimes you choose to start over on a different path.
Angelina has four younger siblings, all of whom are students in Parkland School District. Delilah, 16, is finishing her sophomore year. Jacob, 13; Kassandra, 11; and Gianna, 8, round out the set of siblings that Razan and John have driven “in 8 million different directions” as they’ve balanced school and extracurricular commitments, Angelina said.
“I’m able to do all I can in school because my parents support me in every way,” Angelina said, emphasizing the role her mother’s sacrifices and her father’s academic and professional persistence have played in inspiring her own commitment to success.
Zaiter is now preparing to send off the senior class she’s led, while celebrating a Freddy nomination and a debate team win at conference finals.
That win was a “crazy experience, super exciting, everyone’s like hyping you up,” Zaiter said.
This is the first year Zaiter’s experienced a debate conference finals win, and she did it as a captain of a group of about 35 students who take debate just as seriously as their peers take sports.
Debate as a sport is a running joke with Delilah, a soccer player, Angelina said. It’s not a joke for any of the local professionals who have come to meet Zaiter and the other Law Club students. The attorneys, judges and elected officials who have spoken about their career paths know the Parkland students are their future peers.
For Angelina, who speaks of both debate and theater as team endeavors she’s thankful to be a part of, the biggest challenge of all was turning all of Parkland’s 800-plus senior class into one big team.
Uniting the seniors
It’s unrealistic for 800-plus seniors to all become friends, Zaiter said, but it was important to her to break down barriers between cliques and try to transform a constellation of small friend groups into a united class.
Zaiter said she decided embarrassing herself in public might help. She showed up to the gingerbread house building competition in a Santa Claus costume.
By May, she was monitoring Instagram, looking for group photos with “people who probably wouldn’t be found in the same room on Saturday night.”
“It’s kind of beautiful,” Zaiter said, of the process Parkland students go through, starting out as freshmen at a “huge school” and transforming into seniors who are willing to talk to anyone.
Her overall goal? Make that transformation possible. And make it happen faster.
That means swallowing your pride and being willing to risk a certain part of your vulnerability, Zaiter said.
On Wednesday, she leads her class in their graduation. She’ll then hand off the class key to the Class of 2027 president.
Then Angelina gets to start thinking about the “beautiful, fantastic” campus in Washington where she’ll study law.
Choosing Georgetown over schools closer to home was a “scarier leap,” Zaiter said.
She also said John Zaiter does not allow his daughter to say “I can’t.”
Parkland senior Angelina Zaiter says her favorite role on a packed resume is her work as senior class president. The daughter of Syrian immigrants, Zaiter will head to Georgetown to study law. https://mrf.lu/BgT5
