Low teacher pay has some US schools recruiting overseas

GLENDALE, Ariz. — The latest wave of foreign workers sweeping into U.S. jobs brought Donato Soberano from the Philippines to Arizona two years ago. He had to pay thousands of dollars to a job broker and lived for a time in an apartment with five other Filipino workers. The lure is the pay — 10 times more than what he made doing the same work back home.

But Soberano is not a hospitality worker or a home health aide. He is in another line of work that increasingly pays too little to attract enough Americans: Soberano is a public school teacher.

As walkouts by teachers protesting low pay and education funding shortfalls spread across the country, the small but growing movement to recruit teachers from overseas is another sign of the difficulty some districts are having providing the basics to public school students.

Among the latest states hit by the protests is Arizona, where teacher pay is more than $10,000 below the national average of $59,000 per year. (Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey on Thursday signed into law a new state budget that included nearly $273 million earmarked for teacher raises). The Pendergast Elementary School District, where Soberano works, has recruited more than 50 teachers from the Philippines since 2015. They hold J-1 visas, which allow them to work temporarily in the United States, like au pairs or camp counselors, but offer no path to citizenship. More than 2,800 foreign teachers arrived on American soil last year through the J-1, according to the State Department, up from about 1,200 in 2010.

“In these times, you have to be innovative and creative in recruiting,” said Patricia Davistussey, Pendergast’s head of human resources. “We embrace diversity and really gain a lot from the cultural exchange experience. Our students do as well.”

The district, which covers parts of Glendale, Avondale and north Phoenix, is a hotbed of activism in the teacher walkout movement, known as #Redfored. Picketing educators say they have had to move in with their parents, apply for food

DEANNA ALEJANDRA DENT / THE NEW YORK TIMES Donato Soberano, center, talks to his seventh-grade science students at Sunset Ridge Elementary School in Glendale, Ariz. Budget cuts and stagnant salaries have prompted his district and others to recruit educators in his native Philippines to fill...