When school districts resort to the H-1B program to hire teachers, the motivation is saving money, not a lack of local talent.
This was made clear when one analyzes the job offers made in the H-1B program by an independent school district on the south side of San Antonio, Texas. The Harlandale ISD offers the pay of $120 to $150 a day, for what is probably a 180-day school year; this works out to a range of $21,600 to $27,000 a year.
Meanwhile, a survey of school teachers wages in San Antonio shows the median salary is $55,054, more than twice that of the best H-1B offer in Harlandale. The chart shows that only 10 percent of the city’s school teachers are paid as little as $37,701, and the ISD is offering H-1B holders $10,000 a year less than that figure.
School Teacher Salary in San Antonio, Texas |
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Meanwhile, press coverage, as shown in this KSAT broadcast, totally missed the economics of this offer, with this as the partial text of its coverage:
In a recent school board meeting, Harlandale ISD unanimously voted to approve funds for employee immigration and legal services and expenses under the H-1B visa program ... “by bringing diverse perspectives and global expertise into our classrooms we aim to broaden horizons ... and prepare our students for a globally interconnected world,” said Gerardo Soto, Harlandale ISD Superintendent.
Some background may be useful here. In Texas, it is possible for the local establishment to carve out minority-heavy neighborhoods, usually poverty-stricken ones, and create independent school districts, and thus protect richer (usually Anglo) neighborhoods from the burden of helping to educate the Hispanic students. Most states don’t permit this sort of educational gerrymandering, but this is Texas.
Harlandale is a perfect example of this sort of thing. According to the Texas Tribune, 97.6 percent of the students are Hispanic, and 80 percent of them are “at risk”, compared to 53.5 percent state-wide.
The article indicated that the new hires would include English as a Second Language (ESL) teachers; this despite the fact that most of the population of the ISD is bilingual.
One wonders if Harlandale, following the practice of some other states’ school districts, would bring in Filipina school teachers (and their version of Spanish) to work with the kids who know a Mexican form of Spanish. Filipina teachers are subject to exploitation by both school districts and Philippines-based talent agencies, as we have noted in the past.
One also wonders if the bottom-of-the barrel wages will be noticed by either the US Department of Labor, or the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, neither of which is very good at this sort of thing.
Another point: the Harlandale ISD says that it will start hiring H-1B teachers as soon as possible — good luck on that! The ISD will not be able to file for teachers until next spring, and even if it wins the lottery, it will not get any new hires through this program until next fall. It could try to hire some H-1Bs from other school districts, but the offer is probably much too low to attract any takers.
Which brings up my final speculation: Does the ISD know that even if their applications are approved initially, that there is an annual lottery of H-1B slots, as the program is routinely over-subscribed? The KSAT coverage is silent on that matter.