More news from Louisiana Recovery School District
More news from Louisiana Recovery School District
Date: Friday, October 16, 2009 4:04 AM
<<<<< JOB DESTRUCTION NEWSLETTER No. 2064 -- 10/16/2009 >>>>>
As explained in the previous newsletter, the Recovery School District in the
New Orleans, Louisiana area has been hiring H-1B school teachers from the
Philippines. The school district used a third party bodyshop called Universal
Placement International (UPI) to import teachers by using H-1B visas.
On October 1, 2009 the Louisiana Federation of Teachers (LFT) and the American
Federation of Teachers (AFT) filed complaints to the Louisiana Workforce
Commission and the Louisiana Attorney General against UPI. They allege that
UPI engaged in illegal practices in order to defraud the Filipino teachers.
This newsletter goes one step further by presenting convincing evidence that
the schools have been using H-1B to replace their older American teachers.
*> THE CONTRACT AGENCY "BODYSHOP" IS RUN BY A CONVICTED FRAUDSTER
The president and owner of UPI is Lourdes "Lulu" Navarro. She is a native of
the Philippines who moved to California. In addition to being an immigrant,
Lulu is also a convicted felon that has been charged with fraud and many other
serious crimes. This is what the attorney general of California has to say
about her:
http://ag.ca.gov/newsalerts/release.php?id=695&
In the earlier case, Shams and Navarro were convicted on felony
counts of Medi-Cal fraud, grand theft, money laundering, and
identity theft for using the names of legitimate physicians
without permission and filing thousands of false claims with
the state for medical tests never performed. The Attorney
General's Bureau of Medi-Cal Fraud and Elder Abuse seized
approximately $1.1 million in uncashed warrants, which were
returned to the Medi-Cal program.
Clinic owner Navarro was sentenced to five years in prison upon
entering her guilty plea and ordered to pay $200,000 in
restitution by the end of the year. Navarro also was required to
surrender her license as a clinical laboratory scientist and
prohibited from owning or working in any health care business.
Orange County Superior Court Judge Robert Gallivan suspended the
prison sentence under a plea agreement.
Navarro's partner Shams remains in custody pending sentencing in
October after pleading guilty to charges of Medi-Cal fraud. A
third laboratory owner, Zubair Younis, 42, of Brooklyn, N.Y.,
is being sought on a felony warrant.
UPI is probably a Minority and Woman-Owned Business Enterprise (I say
"probably" because I haven't been able to confirm that UPI is registered in a
state as such). Affirmative action rules allow these companies to have a huge
competitive advantage when seeking government contracts. Owning bodyshops like
UPI is the perfect gig for female convicts, especially if they are classified
as "minority".
*> LOUISIANA REPLACED AMERICAN TEACHERS WITH FILIPINOS
First, let's look at a timeline:
2003: The Recovery School District (RSD) was created by the Louisiana
Department of Education. The purpose was to reform "low performing"
schools.
August 29, 2005: Hurricane Katrina strikes Louisiana. The hurricane destroyed
or severely damaged thousands of schools and universities in the Gulf coast
states. Over 250,000 students had no school to attend. Thousands of teachers
were instantly jobless.
November 2005: Over 107 "low performing" schools were put into the RSD.
May 4, 2007: Louisiana Superintendent of Education Paul Pastorek appointed
Paul Vallas to head the RSD.
Summer 2007: Paul Vallas, superintendent of the RSD, said that they were
suffering a severe teacher shortage. This was less than two years after
Katrina displaced thousands of teachers.
May 30, 2008: A memo was sent out to board members about a junket to the
Philippines to hire teachers.
June 20, 2008: School officials go on an all expense paid junket to the
Philippines.
July 15, 2008: Board members sent around emails about the Filipino teachers.
August 5, 2008: Caddo Parish schools were notified that Filipinos with
advanced degrees are being hired for low performing schools. The implication
was that Filipino geniuses would replace the incompetent American teachers.
Low performing schools would now become academic havens.
September 6, 2008: The first Filipino teachers report to work.
Nov 11, 2008: By this time 38 teachers had arrived from the Philippines.
School administrators said that the Filipinos were very good performers.
August 3, 2009: The school district terminated the employment of dozens of
teachers. In total, about 250 teachers formed a pool of available teachers
looking for jobs, but schools hired very few of them. Most of them were not
able to find teaching jobs. That number of 250 is significant -- remember it.
Read this to find out more about the teacher layoffs:
http://www.nola.com/news/index.ssf/2009/08/recovery_school_district_to_la.html
Recovery School District to lay off dozens of teachers today
August 17, 2009: New school year starts. By now about 200 teachers with H-1B
visas were holding jobs. That's very close to the number of Americans that
were fired. The number becomes even closer because some of the laid off
teachers were rehired by other schools. Sadly, most of those teachers couldn't
find jobs in Louisiana schools.
September 30, 2009: A year after the first Filipino H-1B was hired the union
announces complaints concerning UPI.
October 1, 2009: The local teacher's union LFT and the American Federation of
Teachers filed complaints to the Louisiana Workforce Commission and the
Louisiana Attorney General against UPI.
October 4, 2009: By this time 27,000 teachers in California had been pink
slipped. It never occurred to Louisiana school districts to offer them jobs,
or to go to junkets in Los Angeles or San Francisco.
So, in summary here is what happened: School officials took an all expense
paid junket to Manila. They must have had a wonderful time because they
decided to hire young female Filipino teachers. There was just one big problem
though -- they already had more teachers than they needed. The problem was
solved by initiating a large layoff of their American teachers.
There is nothing unusual about the strategy used by the school district.
The usual script goes like this: First employers decide to replace their
American workers with H-1Bs. Then they start firing Americans shortly after
the first wave of H-1Bs report to work. The firings are done after the H-1Bs
report to work in order to make sure the foreign workers are in the bag before
the Americans are eliminated.
You would think that after nearly 20 years of the start of the H-1B program
newspapers and unions would figure the script out, but they never do. They are
usually dumbfounded when somebody like myself tries to explain it to them. If
any of you find a newspaper article that actually explains that American
teachers were replaced in Louisiana please notify me because it would be the
first I have ever seen.
*> THE MOTIVATION FOR REPLACING AMERICAN TEACHERS WITH H-1B VISA HOLDERS
When politicians say something ain't so, then the first thing you know is that
it is so!
Recovery District Superintendent Paul Vallas called any implication
that the district favored hiring new, young teachers false, and
said hiring authority lies with principals.
Vallas is a real silly guy! Of course the district favored hiring young
teachers -- that's why they fired their older Americans and hired young
females from the Philippines.
As I have explained many times, H-1B doesn't cause age discrimination but it
makes it a lot easier for employers to do it. It would be more accurate to say
that H-1B is an age discrimination enabler because the program provides a huge
pool of fresh, inexpensive young blood to exploit. From an employer's point of
view the rest of the world has an infinite labor pool that can be used to
churn older employees out, and younger ones in.
Infinite labor pools are also very useful for creating labor arbitrage, but
that's probably less of a factor in teaching where labor rates are set. So,
keep reading to find out why schools benefit from churning.
To understand how well churning has worked for Louisiana schools look at the
table on the web page:
http://blog.nola.com/graphics/2009/08/RSD-rookie-teachers.jpg
That chart shows that 47% of the teachers in the Recovery School District are
first year teachers while only 1% have been teaching for more than 36 years.
Refer to this chart to see what that means in terms of salaries:
http://www.rsdla.net/Libraries/Salaries/Teachers.sflb.ashx
In simple terms, first year teachers get first year salaries and benefits, so
every time the school hires a fresh wave of Filipinos or new college
graduates, they can fire older employees and save lots of cash.
Politicians and the media love to talk about unemployed engineers and
scientists going back to school to get math and science teaching certificates.
It's a trap many unemployed techies fall for because they don't understand
that the age factor will severely harm their odds of finding a teaching job.
The dynamics of age discrimination and H-1B are lost on almost every labor
expert and economist in the U.S.
*> LOUISIANA ISN'T THE ONLY STATE THAT'S DOING IT!
Take Georgia for example. They list UPI as a registered supplier for foreign
teachers.
http://www.ciclt.net/sn/org/o_detail.aspx?ClientCode=gaspa&O_ID=400006
UPI posted news videos about their Filipino teachers that have been placed in
many areas of the nation. Go here to watch:
http://www.universalplacementinc.com/news.html
This newsletter has done many stories over many years about H-1B teachers
-- the most recent one in New York. Go to the archive to read more.
In 2004 The National Education Association published a comprehensive study on
the use of nonimmigrant school teachers in the USA. I can't find it so they
probably removed it, or changed the URL (see newsletter "NEA study on
H-1B/J-1 teachers", August 18, 2004 - No. 1079"). Considering that the NEA
has known how destructive the H-1B problem is, and they have understood it for
many years, you would think that teacher's unions like the LFT would be
opposed to the program, but they never are -- they just want to reform H-1B
and to prosecute evil employers if they break the regulations. Ha!Ha!
Unions are sooooo naive!
It's not just the NEA that understands that H-1B visa holders are being used
to replace American teachers. Even the American Federation of Teachers, who
co-signed the complaint wrote a study about what is going on, but teacher's
unions still remain oblivious and refuse to advocate the abolishment of the H-
1B program. This statement in the AFT study is quite profound -- too bad
nobody pays attention to this kind of stuff:
It should be recalled that nurse migration to the U.S. began as a
small and seemingly innocuous trend in the 1950s. In 2002, one in
three nurses hired in the U.S. was foreign educated. Such trends
in the health sector may foretell what is to come in education
without thoughtful intervention.
REFERENCES:
http://www.nola.com/news/index.ssf/2009/08/recovery_school_district_to_la.html
Recovery School District to lay off dozens of teachers today
http://www.fairus.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=21535&security=1601&news_iv_ctrl=1721#4
New Report Shows Schools Increasingly Hiring Foreign Teachers Over Americans
http://www.aft.org/pubs-reports/intl/Teacher_Migration.pdf
Importing Educators: Causes and Consequences of International Teacher
Recruitment
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
http://www.nola.com/news/index.ssf/2009/08/recovery_school_district_to_la.html
Recovery School District to lay off dozens of teachers today Posted by rkoenig
August 03, 2009 07:15AM Chris Granger / The Times-PicayuneRecovery School
District Superintendent Paul Vallas greets students at L. E. Rabouin High
School's graduation last year. The RSD is poised to lay off dozens of teachers
today.
Two years ago, New Orleans school officials in desperate need of teachers
scoured job fairs across the country, advertised online, partnered with
nonprofits and offered recruits hefty relocation bonuses -- all in an effort
to ensure that the city had enough teachers in its classrooms when school
opened.
Then last year, the district found itself in nearly the opposite posture:
awash in resumes, with 24 applicants vying for every spot in teachNOLA, a
teacher training and recruiting program.
With intense competition the new norm, even at some of the city's historically
hard-to-staff schools, the Recovery School District, which opens most of its
schools this week, has arrived at a crossroads that would have been
unimaginable two years ago: District officials are poised to lay off dozens of
teachers today -- many of them veterans.
Click to open graphic in new window.
Predictably, the situation drew howls from several educators facing the
prospect of unemployment.
"There's room for the young and enthusiastic, God bless them, but not at the
expense of the people who have been here for many years and understand the
culture, " said Maryjane Potts, who taught art at the RSD's Sylvanie Williams
Elementary School last year but has not yet found a teaching position for this
year.
Recovery District Superintendent Paul Vallas called any implication that the
district favored hiring new, young teachers false, and said hiring authority
lies with principals.
"They make the decision to hire: lock, stock and barrel, " he said. "We don't
guarantee any teacher, veteran or (new), a job."
Last spring, district officials put Potts in a "surplus" teacher pool when
they consolidated Sylvanie Williams and Laurel elementary schools. Many of the
187 surplus teachers were victims of school consolidations or the transfer of
portions of some RSD schools to charter school operators.
Surplus teachers did not lose their positions because of poor performance.
District officials encouraged these teachers to seek out new positions with
the Recovery District or dozens of independent charter schools in the city.
About 80 of those teachers had no luck -- at least with the RSD -- and
received letters last week informing them that their jobs would be terminated
today. Another 30 staff members, including clerical workers and teacher's
aides, also received the notices.
"If you are going to do a reduction in force, why not just say that's what it
is, " Potts said, adding that Sylvanie Williams teachers were told they would
have positions at the consolidated school. "Don't come in and blindside
everyone the last week in July."
Vallas said the surplus teachers were never guaranteed jobs but that more than
100 of them found new positions in the Recovery District, including most
Sylvanie Williams teachers. He added that many of the district's principals
prefer veteran teachers, noting that more than two-thirds of the new teachers
hired by RSD principals have teaching experience.
The principals' hiring "reflects their desire to have more mixed staff in
terms of experience, " he said.
Principals have power
New Orleans public schools now feature completely decentralized hiring:
Seniority guarantees nothing, collective bargaining does not exist, and
teachers keep their jobs only at the discretion of their principals.
For many officials, including Vallas and several principals, the new system
rightfully puts the power in the hands of the people who know their staffs and
their campus needs best.
"I think hiring this year has been really great in the sense that principals
are having really candid conversations about what their expectation is for the
school, why a teacher may or may not be a good fit, and what the year will
look like, " said Kira Orange Jones, the executive director of Teach For
America's operations in the Greater New Orleans region. The program places
elite college graduates in disadvantaged school communities for at least two
years.
But to Daphanne Poole, a surplus teacher who has yet to find a job, the hiring
process seemed unfair from the start. Poole, a longtime New Orleans educator
who taught at Frederick Douglass High School for the second half of the last
school year, said the number of job applicants dwarfed the number of openings
at the job fairs and networking events she attended.
Some schools did not even send representatives, she added.
Through professional contacts, Poole had leads on two possible positions in
the Recovery School District. But, in both cases, school leaders told her
before formal interviews that the district's central office had sent someone
else over to take the job, she said, a concern echoed by other surplus
teachers.
Last month, Poole missed one of the final local job fairs because of a medical
procedure. Though she had wanted to attend the fair, Poole kept her
appointment, fearing she soon would be without health insurance coverage, she
said. Now, she's applying to districts as far away as Alaska.
Vallas denied that the district ever asked principals to choose some teachers
over others. He said Recovery District officials suggested that principals
first look at the list of surplus teachers when filling vacancies. The
district also provided resumes of surplus teachers upon request to principals
trying to staff hard-to-fill vacancies, Vallas said.
250 new arrivals
In interviews, four surplus teachers said they felt that Teach For America
candidates were given preference over veterans in the RSD's hiring process,
something Vallas and Teach for America's Orange Jones strongly deny.
"I went to the job fair and stood for hours in line. I called all the places
they said were going to need people. I went through the whole process, and I
got nothing, " said one surplus teacher who did not want her name used for
fear it would make it harder to get a job.
The teacher said she checks the job-vacancy list every day, but whenever "you
call the principals they say, 'Oh, we've already filled the position.'
"
Orange Jones said her program's teachers are in the same straits as veteran
educators, and are not guaranteed jobs by the RSD. She added that many of the
Teach For America applicants have been turned away by multiple schools, and
that some also ended up in the surplus pool.
The Recovery School District has hired about 20 new Teach For America teachers
for this school year so far and has a contract to hire as many as 30 teachers
through the program, though Orange Jones and Vallas say the contract does not
mandate that the district hire that many.
In all, about 250 new Teach For America instructors arrived in the New Orleans
region this summer to work in the Recovery District; New Orleans charters; and
the schools in St. Bernard, Jefferson and St. John the Baptist parishes.
Dozens of those teachers don't yet have jobs, though Orange Jones said her
organization is "used to teachers getting hired right up until the first days
of school, " she said.
Brian Thevenot contributed to this report.
Sarah Carr can be reached at scarr@timespicayune.com or 504.826.3497.
Categories: Education, News, News: New Orleans
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
http://www.fairus.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=21535&security=1601&news_iv_ctrl=1721#4
New Report Shows Schools Increasingly Hiring Foreign Teachers Over Americans
A report released last week by the American Federation of Teachers (AFT)
entitled "Importing Educators: Causes and Consequences of International
Teacher Recruitment" has revealed that "some American school districts have
turned increasingly to overseas recruiting to find teachers" to fill teaching
vacancies. The findings in the new report raise questions regarding proper
levels of legal immigration and, in particular, the H-1B visa program. (AFT
Report; The New York Times, September 15, 2009).
According to the report, nearly 20,000 teachers were working in the United
States on temporary visas in 2007, and that number is increasing steadily.
The report contains a case study of the Baltimore Public School District and
notes that the city had hired 108 teachers from the Philippines in 2005. Just
two years later, more than 600 Filipino teachers are now working in Baltimore
classrooms, comprising more than 10% of the district's teaching workforce. The
report went on to assert that Baltimore school officials were leaning so
heavily on these foreign teachers to fill job vacancies in their district that
they were recruiting less aggressively in the United States: "Rather than
attending job fairs throughout the Mid-Atlantic, trying to persuade reluctant
American teachers to accept positions in troubled inner-city schools, HR
officials can meet all their hiring needs in one trip. At a single career fair
in Manila, they can interview hundreds of pre-screened applicants, each of
whom is eager to pay for the opportunity to work in Baltimore city schools."
(Id.).
The AFT's findings imply that international teacher recruitment is displacing
American teachers. Amid the current economic recession, declining tax revenues
have forced many state and local governments to lay off teachers. (The Wall
Street Journal, February 3, 2009). Why, then, are school districts across the
country increasingly recruiting foreign teachers to come to the United States
to fill teaching vacancies? The AFT report suggests a possible answer: in one
school district, foreign born teachers were "paid only $18,000 per teacher for
their services, well below prevailing wage." (AFT Report).
The AFT report also points out that many foreign teachers are being brought to
the United States on H-1B visas. The H-1B visa program allows employers to
bring foreign workers to the United States to work in specialty occupations
that require "the theoretical and practical application of a body of
specialized knowledge and a bachelor's degree or the equivalent in the
specific specialty." (Department of Labor). However, some most notably Bill
Gates of Microsoft have put forth the misconception that the H-1B program
exists primarily to bring foreign workers to the United States to work in
technology-related fields. Gates has then leveraged this misconception to
lobby Congress to increase the H-1B visa cap so that companies such as
Microsoft can have access to more cheap foreign labor.
(See FAIR's Legislative Update, March 24, 2008).
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