Foreign teachers having an outsized impact in one rural county school district

Hawthorne has around 3,100 of Mineral County's 4,500 residents. (Photo Credit: Travel Nevada)

One rural county in Nevada has found much-needed reprieve after years of ongoing teacher shortages: foreign teachers from the Philippines.

“We wouldn’t be able to operate without them,” says Mineral County School District Superintendent Stephanie Keuhey. “It really has saved our district.”

Mineral County School District is one of thousands of school districts across the country that have embraced the hiring of teachers with J-1 cultural exchange visas, which allow foreign teachers to work in the United States for three to five years.

J-1 teachers now make up a third of the 46 teachers within Mineral County SD, says Keuhey. They can be found teaching the district’s approximately 600 students in most grade levels and subjects, including key areas like English language arts, math, and special education. All of them hail from the Philippines, though the J-1 program is not exclusively for teachers from the island country.

Prior to the embrace of J-1 visa teachers, Mineral County struggled with teacher shortages. Keuhey, who was a principal in the district for 14 years before becoming superintendent, says elementary school teachers had to be assigned subjects and teach across grade levels rather than having dedicated classrooms.

“We had four teachers to cover three grade levels,” she recalls. “It was stressful on our teachers, having 120 students in a day. We knew we couldn’t sustain that.”

But finding teachers has been difficult. Mineral County is in west-central Nevada, and while it boasts being in good proximity to outdoors areas like June Mountain and Mammoth, it lacks the creature comforts available in cities, making it a tough sell for some applicants. The county’s largest community, Hawthorne, only has around 3,100 residents. Its second largest community is the Walker River Paiute Reservation of about 830 people.

“I’ve hired teachers who’d come to the community and say, ‘I can’t live here. There’s not a Walmart,” says Keuhey.

The visa program has been a boon for the district, offering the foreign teachers an American experience that many Americans never experience and offering districts much-needed support during times of teacher shortages. Additionally, there’s the cultural benefit to the residents of Mineral County.

Unlike Nevada as a whole, the rural county isn’t known for its diversity. The Walker River Paiute Tribe helps make the non-white population one-third countywide, according to Census data, but in Hawthorne, where 3,100 of the county’s 4,500 reside, the population is 77% white alone.

In addition to having each other, the Filipino teachers in Mineral County have found camaraderie and support from fellow work visa holders who work at Mt. Grant General Hospital. For this year’s Armed Forces Day celebration in Hawthorne, the school and hospital workers collaborated on a parade float highlighting Filipino culture, complete with traditional regalia and dances.

“That was so great to see,” said Keuhey. “They’re doing everything they can to bring a different perspective to our district and community.”

Keuhey emphasizes that the J-1 program is a temporary solution to the teacher shortage and that the goal should be to have teachers who can stay beyond the five years allowed by the J-1 program. But for now, the district is celebrating being able to start an academic year with no teacher vacancies.

And state lawmakers are looking to Mineral County for insight into how to improve J-1 programs in other districts where negative experiences have been reported.

’Capitalism at its finest’

Clark County School District teacher Jemimah Cancino, a J-1 visa holder in her second year at a Title-1 elementary school, told lawmakers on the interim committee on education last month that while she is grateful for the cultural and professional development her J-1 visa has provided her with, she she sees plenty of room for improvement of the program, particularly when it comes to fees charged by the agencies that help bring teachers to the United States.

Cancino said on top of the standard agency fee of $5,000, she shelled out $2,000 for the flight from the Philippines to the United States, and had to pay rent covering the month prior to her arrival. And the fees haven’t stopped upon arrival. There is also an annual  “administrative fee for extension of the program” ($1,500) and monthly fees for insurance ($55) and an agency-organized carpool ($175).

“It’s a significant financial burden,” she added.

Democratic Assemblywoman Erica Mosca — a former teacher and the first Filipina elected to the Nevada State Legislature — told the committee that teachers can end up paying anywhere from $5,000 to upwards of $30,000 in fees. In the most extreme cases, teachers can’t pay the upfront fees, take a loan from the agency, and then leave the country still owing money.

“Some of the horror stories we hear from folks are: There are three people living in a room that are then charged a full rate” as if they were the sole occupant, she said. “That’s the experience I’ve heard from other constituents, that it’s not cost sharing. From my perspective, just having standards could help alleviate some of this.”

Debra Schwartz, who oversees the J-1 program at CCSD, said the majority of its J-1 visa teachers are sponsored by for-profit agencies, which typically charge more than non-profit agencies.

“They upcharge just about everything,” she said.

Democratic Assemblywoman Shannon Bilbray-Axelrod, who chairs the legislative interim committee on education, sardonically described it as “capitalism at its finest.”

Keuhey believes Mineral County has been able to avoid such horror stories because of Claire Hayhurst.

Hayhurt, a U.S. citizen originally from the Philippines, was a preschool teacher within the district and approached the administration with the idea of hiring J-1 visa holders. She stepped up to directly recruit teachers and, once they arrived, assisted them.

“She drives them from the airport, helps them find housing,” says Keuhey. “She helps them get driver’s license, social security cards. She walks them through every step.”

Hayhurst is now a principal and the dedicated mentor for the J-1 teachers who is able to help at every step of the process. Her involvement means the teachers don’t have to rely as much on the third-party agencies and their excessive fees.

Schwartz told lawmakers CCSD is pursuing becoming a direct sponsor in order to reduce the financial burden currently falling on teachers.

Meanwhile, Mineral County SD is hoping to establish a H-1B visa program, which would allow teachers to be hired by the district for a longer period of time (six years rather than five) while also opening up immigration paths to allow them to stay longer. The J-1 is a non-immigrant visa, meaning teachers with it are not permitted to apply for a green card. Keuhey says an H-1B program would likely mean higher initial costs for the district but provide more year-to-year stability for everyone.

“That’s worth it,” she added.

Looking forward

A spokesperson for the Nevada Department of Education said it does not track the statewide number of teachers working on J-1 visas, saying in a statement that “educators are not identified by their visa status in our licensing system database.”

CCSD Chief Human Resources Officer RoAnn Triana in July estimated the district this year would hire 175 J-1 teachers from seven different countries — up from 62 hired for the 2019-20 school year and 154 hired for last school year.

Nevada is now considered the 9th most popular state for J-1 visa teachers, she added, which was up several spots from the prior year’s rankings.

Keuhey said she’s seen “some hesitation” from certain districts in Nevada “but in the right environment it can be very successful.”

The superintendent acknowledges there are challenges but notes that all programs designed to help with teacher shortage have downsides. She points to Nevada’s alternative route to licensure (ARL) program, which allows college graduates to work as a teacher while simultaneously earning the educational requirements needed for full licensure.

“When you look at ARL, it comes with challenges because they have a BA in something but not education, so they’ve never been in the classroom,” said Keuhey. “ J1 (teachers), they have been teaching, they know the content. ARL doesn’t know that.”

The interim education committee plans on sponsoring legislation to address predatory agency fees. Two bills tackling the issue were introduced last session but neither made it to a first floor vote. Keuhey said the discussions last session centered on establishing a cap on fees and made her “really nervous,” but after calculating the costs incurred by her district’s teachers she is now more open to the idea.

“Now that I’ve learned more about the process, I don’t see capping the fees as a bad thing,” she added.

The committee also plans on sponsoring legislation to encourage districts with J-1 teachers to become sponsors to reduce fees for teachers, to encourage districts to research the possibility of employing teachers via an H-1B instead, and to encourage the state’s federal delegation to support nationwide changes to the program.