Date: 09-04-2018
Jefferson schools battle teacher shortage by recruiting from Puerto Rico
By Boris Ladwig
Insider Louisville
Only a few days into the school year, the veteran Puerto Rican teacher Angela Cabrera Medina leaned over the desk of Iroquois High School senior Miracle Richardson, 17, to check her progress on an assignment to write a narrative about a personal experience.
Cabrera has more than 30 years of teaching experience, mostly teaching English in Isabela, in northwestern Puerto Rico, but she’s in only her second year at Jefferson County Public Schools.
After class, as Cabrera walked down a school hallway, she ran into Edgardo “Egy” Castro-Garcia, who also came to JCPS from Puerto Rico — with his wife, Ann Mendez Rosario, who also teaches at JCPS. Their 10-year-old daughter, Angela Beltran, attends a JCPS school.
Near palm trees, sugar cane plantations and Caribbean waves, JCPS officials have been recruiting teachers in some unusual markets as they battle a tight labor market, a declining number of novice teachers and rising numbers of international students.
Cabrera also has served as a mentor to Beatriz Velazquez, a 13-year teacher who arrived in Louisville in July and who last month began teaching English as a Second Language at Iroquois.
On Monday, Velazquez led a class of 20 students, hailing from as far as Nepal and Uganda, as they prepared to begin reading “Romeo and Juliet.”
To get the students moving, Velazquez played a modified version of musical chairs. As the sounds of “Despacito” — which delighted some students and annoyed others — echoed from her cellphone — a power outage prevented her from using other equipment — students walked around the room, and when the music stopped, they had to answer, in writing, one of the “Romeo and Juliet”-related questions posted on each wall of the classroom.
Education experts told Insider that the district’s unusual recruitment trips to Puerto Rico, California and the U.S. Virgin Islands were spurred partially by the declining number of people who are choosing to become teachers.
Teacher prep programs are seeing fewer students in part because the tight labor market, with an unemployment rate near 4 percent, is offering young Kentuckians more lucrative careers in other sectors — even without attending college.
But the experts also said the teaching profession itself is seeing less interest from college-bound Kentuckians because of factors including state and national leaders’ continued focus on standardized tests — a bane of many a teacher because test prep takes time away from teaching — state teacher pension woes, teachers being blamed for poor academic results and, in Louisville, the just-averted specter of a state takeover of the local school district.
In the 2016-17 school year, 2,135 undergraduates at Kentucky’s universities declared their intention to become teachers, which was down 11 percent from four years earlier, with each year showing declines, according to data from the Kentucky Education Professional Standards Board, the government agency that oversees teacher prep programs.
The number of Kentucky students who completed a teacher prep program in 2016-17 was 2,044, down by nearly 600, or 22 percent, from four years earlier.
An EPSB spokeswoman told Insider that while the number of undergrads who are applying to become teachers and who are completing teacher prep programs are declining, the number of individuals who receive some type of teaching credential actually has remained fairly steady and, indeed, hit a five-year high of 22,834 in 2017-18.
However, those numbers include certificates issued to administrators and to teachers whose certification has changed, which means they do not offer a reliable look at whether the size of the teacher pool is changing.
The EPSB just last month dropped a requirement that Kentucky teachers have to get a master’s degree to “provide districts with greater flexibility and support in recruiting and retaining teachers.”
The agency spokeswoman told Insider that the move aims to primarily counter significant retention challenges that Kentucky schools face as incoming teachers previously had to obtain a master’s degree within the first few years of their teaching careers.
At the University of Louisville, enrollment numbers for teacher prep programs have fallen even more drastically: In the 2016-17 school year, 100 students declared their intention to become teachers, which was down by 86, or 46 percent, from four years earlier.
Data provided by the University of Louisville showed that total undergraduate enrollment in teacher education in the fall of 2017 was 616, down 11 percent from four years earlier. Enrollment in graduate teacher education programs during that span fell 29 percent.
However, undergraduate degrees the university conferred during that span has remained fairly steady, fluctuating between 113 and 122, though graduate degrees conferred have been cut nearly in half, falling from 163 in 2012-13 to 85 in 2016-17.
Ann Elizabeth Larson, dean of the university’s College of Education and Human Development, told Insider that lower enrollment numbers are coinciding with continued baby boomer retirements.
“A teacher shortage is looming,” she said. “It’s challenging right now to convince young people to go into teaching.”
Meanwhile, she said, school districts reach out to the university with greater frequency — and from further away — to inquire about teaching candidates, especially in STEM fields.
“Districts are very eager to hire, and hire early,” she said.
Jimmy Adams, who formerly worked with the EPSB but now is on staff at JCPS, told Insider that generally when the economy improves, fewer people go to college, because they can find decent jobs without a degree. That enrollment decline affects universities in general, but also teacher preparation programs specifically.
He said the EPSB encourages districts to welcome student teachers, because almost 40 percent of all student teachers are hired where they do their student teaching. Some Kentucky schools have no student teachers, typically in rural areas, which means they’re missing out on a sizable portion of the teacher pool.
Adams said schools also can increase teacher retention by exposing student teachers to realistic teaching environments. Some schools try to shield student teachers from challenging classrooms, which can result in their being rather surprised when they get their first full-time job.
“They tend not to stay in the profession,” Adams said.
The good news, he said, is that despite the challenges, many people continue to see teaching as a calling and remain committed to education — though, he acknowledged, some guidance and direction from state leadership would help in knocking down at least some of the hurdles.
Unusual recruitment strategies
The dynamics have prompted schools to get more creative and, perhaps, opportunistic as they try to fill open teaching positions, especially in STEM and ESL areas at middle and high school levels.
Hardin County Schools officials, for example, are attending career fairs ever further away and have taken to social media to spread the word about new hires and open positions.
Chris Bauer, the district’s chief support officers, who oversees human resources and student services departments, told Insider that the HCS teacher recruitment efforts have meant more frequent and further travel.
The district, which has 23 schools, about 15,000 students and about 1,100 teachers, used to recruit primarily in Kentucky and Ohio, but Bauer said this spring he also traveled to West Virginia and twice to Michigan.
He tries to generate publicity through social media, including a special @HCSTeachRecruit Twitter account that provides information about job openings and hirings. The universities from where HCS recruited the teachers often retweet the messages. Bauer said the process resembles athletic signings.
Many districts deal with similar dynamics, he said, and HCS has tried to differentiate itself by focusing on marketing the area’s quality of life. A YouTube video meant to attract young teachers shows scenes from a local coffee shop and active pursuits such as mountain biking and kayaking.
Bauer said that he tells principals that while the HR staff can get teachers to come to the area, school leaders have to continue to “recruit” the teachers to make sure they stay.
“Good teachers can go anywhere they want,” Bauer said. “They are in the driver’s seat.”
Meanwhile, JCPS, which as of last Monday still had 21 open middle school teaching positions, including more than half of those in math and science, in the last two summers has sent staffers to Caribbean islands and the West Coast to recruit experienced teachers from school districts whose struggles have elicited frustration among teachers.
Last year, JCPS began recruiting in Puerto Rico. This year it also visited the U.S. Virgin Islands. With great success: In the last two years, the district has recruited nearly 50 teachers from Puerto Rico.
Aimee Green-Webb, director of recruitment and staffing for JCPS, told Insider that the Caribbean trips augment the district’s traditional recruitment strategy, which includes attending job and career fairs in Kentucky and nearby states.
Recruits and administrators told Insider that the island hopping benefits JCPS because the district can enlist U.S. citizens with a diverse background and proper teaching certifications, and it helps teachers with more lucrative jobs, better teaching environments and new teaching experiences.
Cabrera, who in the last 20 years had taught 12th grade English in Isabela, said that she decided to come to Kentucky in part because of the island’s financial struggles, which predate Hurricane Maria.
In 2017, the island’s fiscal woes prompted Cabrera to accept a retirement offer that was to pay her 75 percent of her full pension. However, when she got paperwork to let her know that it would take six to eight months for those payments to kick in, meaning she would be without income for that period, she decided to go back to work.
When she heard that JCPS was looking for candidates, she drove two hours to Ponce, on the island’s south side, got interviewed and was told right away that she could get a job.
JCPS officials asked how she would feel about teaching in a diverse classroom, and she said she has done that for much of her career, as Puerto Rico often welcomes refugees from Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Cuba.
JCPS offered relocation costs, facilitated a no-interest loan, agreed to give Cabrera credit for up to 20 years of teaching experience and told her that her teaching credentials would transfer.
Cabrera’s kids are grown, which made the decision to leave the island easier, and so she joined a Puerto Rican contingent of more than 33 teachers plus families who came to Louisville in summer 2017.
Cabrera returns to Puerto Rico often, in part to repair her home from hurricane damage, but also to visit relatives. She rents out the house while she’s living in Louisville. Her grandchildren have visited her new home in Kentucky.
She initially planned to work just one year with JCPS, until the pension kicked in, but now that she’s made the move and has adjusted to her new role, she’s thinking of working a bit longer.
Her pension and salary allow her to travel, and she’s taking full advantage, she said. She has visited Nashville and took the grandkids to a Cincinnati Reds game, which stands out for her because she liked watching baseball on TV in Puerto Rico.
The growing, tight-knit local Puerto Rican community, too, helps her stay connected. She hosted some of the islanders at Thanksgiving last year, and they’ve gotten together for salsa dancing.
“We try to look out for each other,” Cabrera said.
This year she is teaching five classes of 11th and 12th grade English.
Velazquez was in Isabela this summer when she saw JCPS advertise for open positions on Facebook. She also saw ads from districts in Florida, Colorado, Maryland, Georgia and Texas.
She chose Louisville in part because her credentials transferred and she got credit for her teaching experience — and because she knew some of the Puerto Rican teachers here, including Cabrera.
The situation in Puerto Rico was dire, she said, primarily because of fiscal challenges, worsened by corruption. Velazquez, who has a doctorate, had not received a raise in a decade. Groceries are expensive — a gallon of milk can cost $6. Government officials close schools and reassign staff with little to know notice to or input from teachers. Classrooms have no air-conditioning. And fans do not always work because of power failures. Sometimes the water supply is disrupted, leaving hundreds of students without working lavatories.
In Kentucky, Velazquez said, she has a higher salary, lower cost of living and better working conditions. Her husband, an aerospace engineer, is looking for work in Louisville so he can join her here. Her mother and parents-in-law also plan to move to Kentucky.
Nonetheless, she said, leaving Puerto Rico required “a leap of faith.”
When she left the island in July, she had only a conditional contract and did not know exactly what she would be teaching or where. That meant she had to give up her life in Puerto Rico, leave behind her mother and husband, travel to Louisville and get a car and apartment without knowing for sure whether she would have a stable job.
“That was horrible,” she said.
