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This should fire you up

If you are on the fence when it comes to immigration and Hispanics taking jobs away from Americans....this story is for you.

The Dallas ISD has worked out a deal that will allow them to hire 40 teachers from Mexico on three-year work visas.

Why you ask....because there aren't enough bi-lingual teachers.

Or...basically...there aren't enough spanish-speaking teachers to catch up with the growing number of students who don't speak english in the school system.

Sounds strange doesn't it?

DALLAS -- An agreement between the Dallas Independent School District and Mexican education officials will enable Dallas to hire 40 bilingual teachers from Mexico, officials said.

The arrangement calls for the teachers to come next year on three-year work visas.

Dallas Superintendent Michael Hinojosa said the deal with Mexico's education secretary will help fill the 160,000-student district's constant need for bilingual teachers.

"It's a small dent, but it is a dent," he said.

Under state law, Spanish-speaking elementary students must be taught by Spanish-speaking teachers. Dallas was 945 classrooms short of meeting that requirement last year. The district says it's close to meeting its goal for this school year of hiring 450 bilingual teachers.

Hinojosa said Dallas is the first school district in Texas to make such an agreement with Mexico, although some states have done so.

"It's very exciting. It'll help us fill the need that we have," he said. "The fact they're qualified and have the credentials really helps us."

More than 60 percent of the district's students are Hispanic and more than 30 percent are learning English.

Depending on how you look at the numbers, it sounds like nearly 50,000 students are learning English in the district. The story isn't exactly clear...it could be as few at 28,000. At any rate, that's a lot of students who don't speak English.

I'm sure the numbers are comparable for our school system.

But the thing that gets me...do we not have American citizens who are spanish speakers that can be in the schools? The state has already allowed a more lax approach to hiring qualified teachers. It just strikes me as odd here.

Now, I have a good friend in Korea right now, doing the same thing over there. She's teaching English to Korean students. I've known teachers to go to Italy, Germany, France and various other countries to teach English.

I guess it's not so strange after all.

Posted by Jason Palmer at 4:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)