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| Benedict Cabasal, one of the teachers recruited from the Philippines, is a special education teacher at West Valley High School in Fairbanks, Alaska. |
Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy is the first American governor to acknowledge the contributions of teachers brought into the U.S. to teach in the nation's classrooms
The Republican governor met with local Filipino teachers from different Alaska school districts in honor of Filipino History Month. Alaska is home to more than 30,000 Filipino Americans – who are the largest Asian American groups in the state, according to the 2020 Census.
When Alaska was faced with the national teacher shortage due to the pandemic, many school districts in Alaska were scrambling to fill the gaps in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic. Over 100 Filipino teachers arrived in Alaska to fill those roles in our state’s school district.
“We appreciate you all coming over here to teach,” Dunleavy to the group. “Teaching has its challenges, even in the Philippines, but then you come to America and there’s a new set of challenges with some different cultural aspects. For some of you who are teaching in rural Alaska, you are faced with an entirely different culture from your own. We recognize that this was not an easy decision to make, but we thank you for coming here and teaching Alaska’s youth.”
The meet and greet took place at the Atwood Building in Anchorage where Governor Dunleavy thanked the teachers for their dedication and sacrifice in leaving their hometowns to teach in Alaska. There were teachers from Tudor Elementary, Ptarmigan Elementary School, Willard L Bowman Elementary, Lower Yukon School District, Lake Otis Elementary School and the Kake City school district. Also in attendance was the Philippine Honorary Consul Rebecca Carrillo and Deputy Commissioner Nelson San Juan from the Department of Labor.
Before being elected, Dunleavy spent nearly two decades in northwest Arctic communities working as a teacher, principal and superintendent.
After commending the group for their work, he posed a question to the group about why they wanted to teach in Alaska.
Cely Labadan, a teacher from the Kake City School District in Southeast Alaska, said that “teaching is a matter of passion and something that you do in your heart. No matter where you go, it’s a passion.”
The practice of importing foreign teachers have been happening for years as fewer college students choose teaching as a career. It has becoming more difficult fo school districts in rural areas and poor communities to hire teachers, especially io teach science and math. The Philippines has proven to be a rich source of experienced instructors.
Those teachers would have served some of America’s most vulnerable kids, administrators say. “Eighty-eight of the teachers that we had offered jobs to are special education teachers, which is a critical shortage, not only in Nevada, but nationally,” said Jesus Jara, superintendent of the Nevada's Clark County School District.
The Trump administration immigration policies and the pandemic have blocked the issuance of J-1 visas issued to workers with special skills needed in the U.S. The Biden administration and loosening health restrictions have reinstated the J-1 visas and school districts have found been able to restart their teacher recruiting in the Philippines.
Like other waves of Filipino workers, -- farm workers and nurses, for example -- the teachers see the American jobs a chance to help their families. Their U.S. salaries are much higher than what they can earn in the Philippines and even with the higher cost of living, they are able to send a large portion of their earning back to their relatives in the Philippines.
The dark side of bringing in teachers from the Philippines makes them vulnerable to exploitation by recruitment agencies, their school districts or greedy landlords taking advantage of the teachers' unfamiliarity with U.S. laws and practices. As the teachers become more familiar with their rights, lawsuits have been filed in several states charging discrimination or abuse.
The case was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California in Los Angeles on behalf of the teachers by the Southern Poverty Law Center, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), and the Covington and Burling law firm.
“This ground-breaking verdict affirms the principle that all teachers working in our public schools must be treated fairly, regardless of what country they may come from,” said AFT President Randi Weingarten. “The outrageous abuses provide dramatic examples of the extreme exploitation that can occur when there is no proper oversight of the professional recruitment industry. The practices involved in this cases - labour contracts signed under duress and other arrangements reminiscent of indentured servitude - are things that should have no place in 21st-century America.”
Mary Bauer, legal director for the Southern Poverty Law Center, said, “The jury sent a clear message that exploitive and abusive business practices involving federal guest workers will not be tolerated. This decision puts unscrupulous recruitment agencies on notice that human beings—regardless of citizenship status—cannot be forced into contracts that require them to pay illegal fees.”
Dennis Auerbach, lead attorney on the case from Covington and Burling, praised the perseverance of the Filipino teachers. “We are very pleased with the verdict in this case and proud to have stood by these brave teachers as they finally obtained justice,” he said.
Out of 82 new teachers LKSD hired this year, 10 are from the Philippines. This is the first time that LKSD has recruited and hired teachers from outside the U.S. LKSD Human Resources Director Andrea Engbretsen said that the district has historically had trouble hiring enough teachers. But in recent years, she said that there has been a severe shortage of math and science teachers nationwide.
“It is really at a crisis point,” Engbretsen said. “Everywhere we go, I mean, just not even applicants. We can’t even find them.”
And then, she said, a pandemic made a bad recruiting environment even worse for potential hires.
“Many, many said, ‘I need to stay closer to home for family reasons,’ or just a fear of COVID, not wanting to leave their home areas,” Engbretsen said. “Which put us at another challenge of ‘Okay, now, how are we going to fill these positions?’”
That’s when Engbretsen heard about another rural Alaska school district, the Bering Strait School District, that filled its staffing shortage with teachers from the Philippines. She got on the phone right away.
“But the process is fairly lengthy,” Engbretsen said.
She said that there are embassy interviews and visa applications, and lots of paperwork, which is why the first teachers from the Philippines arrived in Bethel in September, after LKSD’s school year had already begun.
When they arrived, they were greeted by several Filipinos already living in town, including Glenda Swope, an LKSD preschool teacher in Bethel who immigrated from the Philippines in 2004. She said that she wanted to provide the new teachers a sense of familiarity. She knows the feeling of arriving in a foreign place.
“It’s like going in a ship and you don’t know who is the captain or, like, you don’t know where you go,” Swope said.
Swope said that at least 20 Filipinos live in Bethel. She said that some work as teachers like her, some are at the Bethel Youth Facility, but the largest number are nurses. She said that many Filipinos came for jobs. Others, like her, came to the U.S. after marrying an American. Swope said that moving from the Philippines to Western Alaska is not as drastic a change as it may appear.
“All of them, they said, ‘I feel like I’m home.’ Yeah, like, me too. Like, I feel like I’m home because we grew up in a simple life in a simple way. And we grew up with close knit families,” Swope said.
