Filipino teachers brought to Kentucky

Date: Thursday, February 19, 2009 9:52 PM

<<<<< JOB DESTRUCTION NEWSLETTER No. 1980 -- 2/19/2009 >>>>>

Lexington, Kentucky just hired a bunch of H-1B school teachers in Kentucky to
teach STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) classes.
Importing Filipino teachers is nothing new as this newsletter has been
reporting about it for years. The article below calls what is going on a
trend:

Recruiting foreign teachers to fill critical shortage areas has been
a trend in American elementary and secondary education for about a decade.

Of course as we all know there are many unemployed and underemployed STEMs in
the U.S. that are qualified and willing to teach these subjects in school. The
problem is that the schools won't hire them, even if they get certified to
teach. Schools want teachers that are young, cheap, compliant, and of course
multi-lingual.

The news article below contains a contradiction that can be difficult to catch
if you don't pay attention. Read this paragraph in the front part of the
article that says they can't find "certified teachers".

Home, for Dacles, is Manila, the Philippines. Now, however, he is
one of 16 Filipino teachers working in the Fayette County Public
Schools, all recruited from overseas to teach in subject areas
such as math, science and special education, where certified
teachers often are hard to find.

Later in the article it says the Filipinos aren't certified to teach those
subjects either! In other words, they are no more qualified than Americans to
teach the subject. In most cases the Filipinos are less qualified because they
got their educations in substandard schools and diploma mills in the
Philippines.

Kentucky shuns American teachers but it is more than happy to give Filipinos
fast track certifications so that they can get into the classrooms quickly.

As a result, the school system sometimes had to get emergency
certifications for people to teach STEM classes even though
they lacked background in those subjects, he said.

For those of you that think Indian when you hear the word "bodyshop", perhaps
this will broaden your outlook because many countries besides India have set
up shop here to import foreign labor. The bodyshop Kentucky hired to import
the teachers is called "Avenida International Consultants", which supposedly
covers the cost of getting the teachers certified in Kentucky and it pays for
the other expenses related to travel and moving. What the article forgot to
mention is that this bodyshop is infamous for taking training money and visa
fees out of the pockets of their Filipino employees. That company has had
lawsuits against their blatant indentured labor policies but it hasn't put
them out of business -- in fact it appears that they are doing better than
ever.

Avenida International Consultants is owned by a slaver named Ligaya Avenida.
Her clients include West Contra Costa Unified, San Jose Unified, Oakland
Unified School District, West Palm Beach, Florida, Ravenswood Unified,
California, Memphis Unified, Columbia Public Schools, and Baltimore.

Here is Avenida's website, and if you want to read more about her look up
these newsletters in the archive:

http://www.ligayaavenida.com/

2005-01-10 Baltimore Schools Circumvent H-1B limits

2005-01-11 Ligaya Avenida imports Filipino teachers for California

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

http://www.kentucky.com/181/story/700367.html

Posted on Thu, Feb. 19, 2009
Filipino teachers recruited for hard-to-fill jobs in Lexington By Jim Warren
jwarren@herald-leader.com Arnold Dacles has had to make some adjustments
during his first year of teaching science at Leestown Middle School,
particularly during the recent wintry weather.

"I had never seen snow before," Dacles said. "Back home we only have two
seasons - wet and dry."

Home, for Dacles, is Manila, the Philippines. Now, however, he is one of 16
Filipino teachers working in the Fayette County Public Schools, all recruited
from overseas to teach in subject areas such as math, science and special
education, where certified teachers often are hard to find.

Recruiters from the Fayette schools went to Philippines in late 2007 to
interview several dozen job applicants, all of whom had experience teaching in
schools there. From that pool, they ultimately selected Dacles and 15 others
to teach in Lexington schools for the 2008-2009 school year.

The Filipinos arrived here late last summer and have been on the job since
classes began last August. They are working on visas, sponsored by the county
schools, that will allow them to stay in the United States up to three years.

They have master's degrees and are certified to teach in Kentucky, said
Fayette County School Superintendent Stu Silberman.

Recruiting foreign teachers to fill critical shortage areas has been a trend
in American elementary and secondary education for about a decade. In
Kentucky, the Jefferson County Public Schools have hired teachers from both
the Philippines and Barbados in recent years.

Fayette County previously has hired teachers from other countries to teach
foreign languages, but this is the first time the district has directly
recruited a block of teachers from overseas.

Silberman says school officials took the step because Fayette County, like
many other districts, has been struggling to fill teaching slots for so-called
STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) classes. As a result, the
school system sometimes had to get emergency certifications for people to
teach STEM classes even though they lacked background in those subjects, he
said.

Educators blame the problem -- which extends nationwide -- on the relatively
small number of prospective teachers who graduate from U.S.
colleges today with training in STEM subjects. Most who have such training go
into private business or industry because the pay is better.

"We've had some very serious shortage areas where we just can't find people in
these particular certifications," Silberman said. "You have to be innovative
to find ways of meeting these needs."

Silberman stressed that the county schools have not recruited foreign teachers
when qualified people were available locally. "We weren't keeping anybody out
of jobs," he said.

Other school districts that have recruited teachers from the Philippines say
they generally have worked out well.

"Our experience was that they were very, very good educators," said Tim
Wilhite, a spokesman for the Baldwin County, Ala., Public Schools, which
signed about a dozen Filipino teachers in 2007. "If we had the need for
additional teachers, and couldn't fill the positions locally, we'd consider
recruiting from the Philippines again."

However, there have been some problems.

Two Filipino teachers who were working in the Baltimore City Schools committed
suicide in 2007, apparently despondent at being far from theirs homes and
loved ones.

The Roanoke, Va., Public Schools recruited six Filipino teachers in 2007 but
they didn't show up on time. The schools later decided not to recruit more.

In El Paso, Texas, recruiters allegedly tricked Filipino teachers into paying
them fees of $10,000 each to secure jobs in Texas schools that never
materialized. Federal charges, including conspiracy to smuggle aliens into the
United States, were filed against several people.

Nevertheless, Filipino teachers still seek jobs in U.S. schools because
salaries here typically run two or three times the levels back home. And
American recruiters like Filipino teachers because the Philippines'
educational system closely resembles the U.S. system.

Each of the Filipino teachers who came to Lexington paid fees of several
thousand dollars to a California-based firm that worked with the Fayette
schools to facilitate the recruiting process.

The firm, Avenida International Consultants, in turn covered the cost of
getting the teachers certified in Kentucky, paid for their travel here and
other related expenses.

The Fayette schools' only expense is paying the teachers' salaries, which
equal the amounts American teachers with the same training and experience
would receive.

The time and expense are worth it, the Lexington teachers say, even if it
sometimes means leaving family and friends back in the Philippines.

Fatima Dela Pena, 33, who is teaching at Winburn Middle School this year, said
Lexington was "an opportunity I couldn't pass up," even though it meant a long
separation from her husband. He's on a three-year tour as a school
administrator and teacher in Indonesia.

This is Dela Pena's second U.S. tour. She taught in Palo Alto, Calif., from
2001 to 2004.

"I had a wonderful experience there, and I wanted to come back," she said.
"The first time it was more of an adventure. This time, it was something I
just wanted to do."

Dela Pena said she and her husband, who will visit her here this summer,
eventually might settle in the United States.

Esmeralda Agustin, 38, said she dreamed of teaching in the United States for
years before becoming a special education teacher at Deep Springs Elementary.

"My parents didn't want me to come because I am the youngest in the family,"
she said. "But when my father passed away a few years ago, I encouraged my
brothers to allow me to come here and work."

Early in the school year, Fayette County assigned six of the Filipino teachers
to "release-time" teams, which move from school to school to free up in-house
teachers for professional development sessions. The teams are generally made
up of retired teachers who work part-time.

According to Silberman, the situation developed because Fayette County
recruiters had to estimate how many teachers to bring over from the
Philippines before knowing exactly what the need would be. Since the Christmas
break, however, almost all of the Filipino teachers have been assigned to
specific schools, officials said.

All of the teachers speak English, but Melodee Parker, the Fayette schools'
human resources director, said she's heard some complaints that some are hard
to understand.

Silberman said he heard similar complaints early in the school year, but that
they've faded in recent months.

"All of the teachers had to be able to speak English coming in, and some were
stronger than others," he said. "With any new program there are growing pains.
But I think that for the most part it has gone well."

The program gets high marks from some administrators and teachers in the
county system who have worked with the Filipinos.

Winburn Middle School science teacher Ron Chi says that collaborating with
Katrina Frias, one of the Filipino teachers, has enhanced his efforts to
create a "mini science museum" in his classroom."

"I wouldn't be able to even attempt this if I didn't have Katrina here,"
Chi said.

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