School District Brings in H1B Teachers

Published on July 31st, 2005

reviewjournal.com — News: TEACHER SHORTAGE: School district in ‘crisis’ — How about paying a living wage instead of this tactic. Perhaps the administrators should all be outsourced to India too. That would help.

Another reason for home schooling.

Gutierrez said the district has made more than 2,100 offers and has been rejected by more than 400 teachers. Those who have rejected contracts from the district have cited low starting salaries and high property costs in the area.

Gutierrez said the district had about 2,000 teachers contracted by the beginning of the 2003-04 year.

The shortfall comes at a time when the district has implemented unique recruiting methods to fill its vacancies.

For the first time in Nevada, school district recruiters have gone overseas to bring foreign-born teachers to Clark County. Teachers from the Philippines are expected to arrive in town soon. They’ll be followed by 14 teachers from Spain and six teachers from Canada, who will arrive in Las Vegas in the next few weeks. The teachers will work under temporary visas that expire in three years.

JoAnn Schlekewy, director of licensed personnel in charge of recruiting, said all the recruits are expected to begin teaching in the fall. The teachers will fill roles in special education, math and science.

Schlekewy said the international-teaching recruits boast impressive credentials, including being bilingual and holding multiple degrees.

She added that the district is considering recruiting in Mexico, Singapore and Puerto Rico. But any additional recruiting overseas will depend on how well the foreign recruits perform.

16 users responded in " School District Brings in H1B Teachers "

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# 1 Jim Dermitt said, on July 31st, 2005 at 10:54 am

The elite technology crowd all bitched and moaned about unions. The whole industry is now a low wage mess with big corporations running this sort of plan. Next it will be cyber schools with kids at home being taught by a teacher over DSL on a PC from India. This is more social planning by the folks who produced the dotcom boom. We know how that turned out. We’ll have to shut all of the U.S. schools down next so the kids can stay home and learn how to live digitally so they can be employed at Google or Microsoft in the future virtual world they are now creating. Everybody can become AdWord or MSN experts and sell code or words on the Internet for virtual pennies.

# 2 AB CD said, on July 31st, 2005 at 10:58 am

I don’t think teachers are underpaid, even in rural areas and certainly not in districts with 2000 teachers. Hourly salaries average about $35 nationwide, so starting salaries are still pretty good for nin months work and a smaller workday. Those 3-4% annual raises over the last decade have really boosted incomes.

# 3 Chris Gregg said, on July 31st, 2005 at 6:34 pm

AB CD said,
“I don’t think teachers are underpaid”

Well, with a B.S. in EE and a Master’s in Education, I think I’m underpaid as a high school physics teacher. The average EE salary just dropped to $99k per year, and I make $47k per year (after teaching for three years). I guess my summer vacation is worth $52k per year to me…

-Chris

# 4 AB CD said, on July 31st, 2005 at 8:42 pm

Note the problem is limited to specific types of teachers. THat’s what you would expect under union wage plans that pay the same to kindergarten teachers and high school calculus teachers.

# 5 Last Of The Moheegans said, on July 31st, 2005 at 10:56 pm

The reason there’s a shortage is that students are becoming increasingly harder to teach & poor performance is blamed on the teacher 1st, students 2nd. As goes the educational system, so goes the nation. The power to run the classroom has been stripped & most adminstrators are bean counters that have not stepped foot in a classroom. Also, I know teachers who go to constant tech seminars about the digital classroom, yet have no PC in their class & not enough supplies. We are fighting ignorance on the cheap, the same way we fight wars & fix our infrastructure. Check out this repor on our crumbling society:
http://www.asce.org/reportcard/2005/index.cfm

# 6 Eduardo said, on August 1st, 2005 at 1:54 am

The picture is higly offensive, and wrongly spelled. Should say : ” ¡ Hagámoslo con dos cojones !” and translates exactly as: ” Let’s do it with two bollocks !”. If you censor some silly language in english, saying f**k instead of fuck, I don’t understand why you can say “cojones” in Spanish and feel great about it.

# 7 Colin said, on August 1st, 2005 at 7:45 am

I just graduated from a high school in the Clark County School District and the shortage of teachers as been very apparent for quite a while. I agree with Comment #5 in the fact that a good deal of the decline in education should be placed on the students. I sat at school day in and day out amazed at how so many people would take their time to be at school but do nothing more than take up space.

I think the only issue about bringing in foreign teachers is that we’re now basically outsourcing education. I honestly believe that these “imported teachers” could be a good idea however, because if there isn’t anyone here who wants to do it, we might as well look in places where the standard of education is higher (we’ve all heard the idea that americans are lazy, most often only learning english while european schools involving more rigorous coursework).

# 8 Jim Dermitt said, on August 1st, 2005 at 8:23 am

There was a real smart kid and his mother asked him what he wanted to be when he got older. A teacher he replied. Why don’t you want to be a doctor? Without teachers, who will create all the doctors?

I like that story, it helps breaks up the propaganda here. Everything I needed to know, I learned in kindergarten.

# 9 site admin said, on August 1st, 2005 at 8:28 am

Nobody censors “fuck” with “f**k” unless the individual chooses to use “f**k” which often draws attention to self control. Saying the picture is highly offensive AND misspelled is like saying the food is bad and the portions too small. It doesn’t make sense. And are you referring to Spanish or Mexican Spanish or street argot in your correction? Just wondering. I’ll fix it.

# 10 meetsy said, on August 1st, 2005 at 8:38 am

Stick 30 4-1/2 and 5 year olds in a kindergarten classroom with ONE teacher and watch chaos. Put 25-28 5 to 6 year olds in a first grade classroom with ONE teacher…and see how out-of-control they are, and how no-one-child gets any individual attention….. and then, let’s all scratch our heads and wonder how is it possible that 7th graders are so downright NASTY to the teachers. Hmmm.
Schools are NOT doing what they’re supposed to do….TEACH. The children with learning disabilites are NOT being identified (costs money, and the principals are the ones to make the decision on who gets tested, if anyone), kids with emotional issues are ignored. Some schools insist that the teacher supply some-to-all of the pencils/paper/supplies — part of their “cost of doing business”. Tenured teachers are, for the most part, long since bored with the concept of teaching.
Our schools are much, much worse than they were 10 years, 20 years, and a far cry from what they were 30 years ago. It’s not fair, it’s not good, and it’s why more parents are opting for private schools and homeschooling.
The trend of schools to conglomerate…in the business model of corporations merging with other corporations…is a joke. Sure, maybe it’s cheaper “ON PAPER” but, in reality….it costs us more in uneducated kids and violence. Break the schools into smaller schools….back to multi-year classrooms (which really does help by mixing kids of the same educational level, instead of by age). Smaller classes, and less administration. Include the topics that, long ago, fell by the wayside: geography, cursive, philosophy, Latin, literature, poetry, accounting, law concepts, government (civics), ..to name a few. The education my father received in grammar school was at the same level a college student gets today. Well rounded.
We ARE rapidly becoming a nation of morons.
Since the education system is such a “full of themselves” joke…the ONLY real choice is to keep you kid OUT of the public education system….

# 11 Ed Campbell said, on August 1st, 2005 at 9:20 am

Here in New Mexico, our teachers have made it from 46th up to 44th worst paid. Whoop-de-doo. A significant portion of the student base is here illegally. But, the state is going to make that OK by importing teachers from Mexico — to teach them — for wages even lower than “standard”.

And we have a governor who wants to impress the nation with his qualifications to be president!

# 12 AB CD said, on August 1st, 2005 at 4:49 pm

Chris, you can’t compare average teacher salaries with engineers when the skill sets are different and much harder for engineers. Sure for high school physics you would want higher salaries, but union rules don’t allow it. Still 47K for nine months isn’t poverty. What was your starting salary?

# 13 laineypie said, on August 1st, 2005 at 7:46 pm

I think everyone knows that education is in trouble- what most people don’t realize is that school is a place to learn not a place to dump your kid while you go to work. Also, alot of teachers are afraid to confront teachers about students who don’t learn. OUr teachers need to make more money because they deal with people’s kids the way people don’t deal with their own kids. They are trying to teach, while kids dont care about learning but about the cute girl/boy next to them. I went to a private school for K-8 and got one of the best educations I could expect for one of six kids in a single mother household. I dropped out of public high school shortly after starting, mostly because I had already learned everything they were teaching me and I felt like I was basically going through the basics I had already acquired in private school. When you are a sophmore and you are still making projects that involve crayons and papaer machie’ you know you are advanced above your classmates.
Anyway, a year or so later I got a GED and went straight to community college, where I am amazed at the ease of the lesson plans. Very little is expected of you. I excel in community college and will move onto the university soon. What I notice in community college is alot of the students starting there are from public high schools, and they struggle with the lessons and the work expected. I dont understand how it could be so complicated for some. How did I get to a point where I am better off in college after dropping out of high school, where it seems others went through 4 years and still did not learn?

As far as importing teachers goes, I wonder if they will be teaching history or geography and if they are up to par in these subjects as much as an american would be. HAHA it would be funny to learn a french woman was teaching your kids’ english class. All in all, it’s a sad day when we have to import teachers to teach our kids. Then again after 3 year contracts most will probably want to leave. If people in this country can’t stand to be in a room of snobby 7th graders what makes a district think a foreign teacher would?

# 14 Eduardo said, on August 2nd, 2005 at 1:21 am

Well, Spanish and Mexican Spanish are variations of the same language, with minor differences in structure and some localiced words, the same that English and American English are the same language with some minor differences. The misspelling was that you didn’t include the ” ¡ ” sign at the beginning of the sentence, which is compulsory in Spanish (any Spanish). I accept your comment on the “fuck” term. Good to know you don’t censor it.
And regarding the offensiveness of the picture, why it cannot be misspelled and offensive ? As I explained before, it is misspelled (I know you will consider it a minor mistake, but no student will be allowed to pass final exams in Spain if (s)he misses the ” ¡ ” sign !!). And the use of the word “cojones” in English might have some funny connotations, but in Spanish (and the picture includes a whole sentence in Spanish) it’s a very strong word, and including it in a picture illustrating the arrival of Spanish teachers to the USA seems completely out of context to me. No teacher would ever use it in a class, and of course would never write it in the blackboard.

# 15 Charlene Austin said, on October 24th, 2005 at 9:00 pm

But, of course, we all know it is the parent’s fault. We have heard it often enough from school administrators on the news as we stuggle through the third or forth hour of trying to help our kids figure out what that blob is on the poorly copied sheet of paper that serves as instructional material, or the smeared words in the copied book sent home as reading material.

I came to Clark County School District in my sophmore year of high school and was handed the same english and math books I had studied in the fifth grade. But at least I was given a book.

Perhaps it is time for the parents to stand up and say okay, it’s our fault. We have sat back and let you run the educational system into the ground, now we say no more!! We are demanding our constitutional right to a free and EQUITABLE education for our children. Every public school will be expected to perform at the same level as the private schools.

Less time grading parents and making excuses, and more time teaching would be a good start.

# 16 Chigoziri A.Moses said, on March 27th, 2006 at 8:56 pm

My company is ready to work with any US School District interested in recruiting qualified Math,Science and Special Edu Teachers from Nigeria.Some of the teachers have PhD,and between 5 and 33 years experiences.Our service will be free of charge to such School District.

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