Louisiana Parish Has to Hire 42 Teachers From Philippines

I was pretty shocked when I read this in the paper this morning. Caddo looks outside U.S. to fill teaching posts

Dozens of vacancies in key subject areas have forced the Caddo public school district to look outside the country to fill teacher positions.

Forty-two teachers from the Philippines will fill key positions in math, science, special education and English — critical shortage areas for which school districts throughout the U.S. have trouble finding qualified people.
The teachers are assigned to the district's hard-to-staff schools, working in 27 of the district's 75 schools.

Twenty-seven of the teachers are assigned to teach special education, six will teach science and five will teach math. Three teachers will instruct English classes, while one will be assigned to teach an early childhood education class.

"We felt it was necessary to get these teachers to fill our critical shortage areas," Jan Holliday, director of certified personnel for Caddo, said Tuesday during a presentation to the Caddo Parish School Board. "We went to fill positions that we felt like we wouldn't have been able to staff."
The district worked with Universal Placement International Inc. to find the teachers. Holliday, along with Pam Barker, special education staffing administrator, and Sara Ebarb, an elementary school director, traveled the 8,000 miles to interview about 400 teachers

.

We also learn

Caddo isn't alone in hiring teachers from the Philippines.
East Baton Rouge Parish hired 40 Filipino teachers last year and will hire an additional 60 teachers for the upcoming school year. Jefferson Parish is expected to hire 60 teachers, according to reports published in The Times Picayune.
Throughout the U.S., school districts in Texas, Washington and Kansas also have used recruitment services to hire teachers in the Philippines.

More at the link. Let me say I feel sorry for these teachers and I wonder if they have a clue what they are getting themselves into . I had a very significant person I knew that taught in one of these school and it is truly the LORDS work. I wish them all the luck and I hope they succeed. Anyway is this a nationwide problem? I know we are talking about Special Education (which is far more vast and incorporates far more people than people realize) but this seems like a very large number of folks we are getting from overseas.

The comment section is quite lively on this. Perhaps it is a blessing but I am concerned that this shows that we have a real big teacher shortage coming up.

Update- HINT TO THE DIOCESE OF SHREVEPORT-

Chances are these are Catholics so if they get disillusioned with the public schools perhaps we can pick them up :) Of course that means connecting with them as soon as they get into town and offering support