Georgia Schools Appose Use of Jamaican Teachers
Foreign teachers test policy
An arcane law dredged up to get rid of teachers from abroad,
Georgia's alien statute may be struck
By BRIAN FEAGANS
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 03/25/07
It's unclear how the rumors started. But like Spanish moss, they seemed to hang in the air at every turn around Brunswick and St. Simons Island.
The Jamaican teachers were stealing U.S. jobs, crackled the bitter callers on talk radio. Students couldn't understand their Caribbean accents, parents whispered.
Jamaican native Leonie Palmer 'cried for days' when she was asked to leave Altama Elementary School.
Rebecca Cooper, assistant superintendent for human resources at Glynn County schools, had long struggled to recruit minority teachers until she traveled to Jamaica to select candidates.
Robert Strickland opposed the use of Jamaican teachers, saying they were stealing jobs Americans should be doing.
As an award-winning educator with more than 25 years of classroom experience, Leonie Palmer thought she was immune from the uproar. Often the first to arrive and the last to leave Altama Elementary, she lived the motto festooned to a ceiling tile in her second-grade classroom: "100% and nothing less."
But late one Friday a year ago, a fellow Jamaican teacher called Palmer in a panic. She began reading from the evening newspaper. The Glynn County Board of Education had voted not to renew the contracts of Palmer and four other teachers, she said.
The reason: They were foreigners.
The coastal school system had dredged up some long-forgotten state law barring their employment, the teacher said in disbelief.
Palmer hung up the phone in tears, collapsed onto her bed and tried to make sense of it all. Palmer was the island wonder whose mix of no-nonsense discipline and sing-song subtraction had inspired the school district to recruit 14 other teachers from Jamaica. How could she be asked to leave — on the front page of the Brunswick News?
"I cried for days," Palmer recalled. "I couldn't even go to church I was so ashamed."
But as Palmer stared at the ceiling that April weekend, she couldn't foresee the turmoil ahead. There would be federal lawsuits, accusations of racism and more tears. The controversy would reach the highest levels of state government, snaring Gov. Sonny Perdue's office in settlement negotiations and, just this month, prompting legislative efforts to change Georgia law.
The episode would challenge a school system struggling to recruit minority teachers in compliance with a federal desegregation order. And it would lay bare feelings about race and immigration in a community that, just two years earlier, had put on an international face as host of the G-8 Summit.
A 'smorgasbord'
In two decades of recruiting, Rebecca Cooper had never seen anything like the scene at her hotel in Kingston, Jamaica. Dozens of schoolteachers filed through the conference room that February day in 2004, eager for a tryout before Cooper and recruiters from four other U.S. school systems. Many had logged more than a decade in the classroom, the kind of experience Cooper dreams of as assistant superintendent for human resources at Glynn County Schools. A few had advanced degrees.
"It was like being at a smorgasbord," Cooper would say later.
Visiting International Faculty, or VIF, had arranged the recruiting trip. The North Carolina-based group supplies 1,700 teachers from abroad to schools in 10 states, with a mission of exposing children to the kind of diversity that increasingly defines the global economy. Some 13 systems utilize VIF in Georgia, led by Gwinnett Schools with 54 teachers and Fulton with 25 instructors.
Jamaica, in particular, offered another powerful draw for Cooper. Glynn County had long struggled to attract minority teachers. Today 43 percent of the students are minorities, but only 15 percent of the teachers are.
Cooper, who is African-American, said young black professionals are relatively few in the county, making the community a tough sell.
" 'How far are you from Atlanta?' That's what they want to know," said Cooper, a 50-something Savannah native. "They want bright lights, big city."
Cooper must send her recruiting schedule to the federal district court that has overseen the county's desegregation order for more than three decades. Pressure mounts each year as more of the district's black teachers retire.
But Cooper says it was talent — not just skin color — that drew her to Jamaica in the first place. When Glynn County began using the VIF program in 2002, the system received two teachers from Canada, two from Australia, one from Jamaica and one from the United Kingdom. Three left before the end of the first year, out of homesickness, or because they felt the workload was too heavy, Cooper said. Only one — the tireless teacher from Jamaica — stayed for more than a year.
Her name was Leonie Palmer.
Cooper returned to Brunswick triumphant, having signed up 14 new recruits.
"I was excited," she said. "I expected pats on the back."
Targeting 'aliens'
Elected in 2004 to the school board, Robert Strickland represented the rural inlands of the county, where fading sea breezes rumple pine plantations and rebel flags. Strickland, 69, had been on a crusade to end the school system's participation in the VIF program since learning of the latest batch — one Canadian and 14 Jamaicans.
The retired chemical plant manager believed the teachers were taking jobs that U.S. citizens could — and should — do. The county's struggle to attract minority teachers was no excuse, said Strickland, who is white. There were plenty of qualified African-American teachers out there. Cooper wasn't trying hard enough, he said.
"This was a cop-out," Strickland said recently from his home. "She went to Jamaica and picked her out a bunch of them."
But last spring, Strickland's gut told him there must be something in the law barring the use of foreigners at the expense of natives. So he asked the board's attorney to check.
Turns out Strickland thought much like Georgia legislators did — in 1938. That's when the General Assembly passed a law stating that no state agency or local government shall employ a foreign national "until a thorough investigation has been made and it is ascertained that there is no qualified American citizen available to perform the duty desired."
In one way, the discovery had come too late for Strickland. Weeks earlier he had been on the short end of a 5-2 vote to renew the VIF teachers' contracts for a third and final year. But there were other non-U.S. citizens in the school system.
Palmer, for one, already had completed the VIF program and, with the school system's blessing, obtained a temporary work visa allowing her to continue teaching elementary school. And three other Jamaican teachers in the school system were not employed through VIF.
Georgia, Strickland thought, was about to get reacquainted with the State Alien Statute, a law as old as he.
Obey the law
Strickland could count on at least one strong ally on the Glynn County Board of Education.
Earl Perry, a 62-year-old commercial real estate developer from St. Simons Island, had gone so far as to hire a private attorney to investigate the district's use of VIF, saying the process lacked transparency.
He, too, believed the schools should be hiring from within the United States, not abroad. Perry feared the teachers could be unqualified or, worse, potential security risks.
"They weren't checking their résumés," Perry said recently. "There were no background checks. One of them had a degree from West Indies University or something."
VIF spokesman Ned Glascock said the program does conduct a background check in each teacher's home country. And all of the 211 teachers who have arrived in Georgia through VIF must be state-certified.
School board member Venus Holmes said she wondered whether Strickland and Perry, who is white, would have raised such a ruckus if these were largely European immigrants.
"If you're not prejudiced," she said at one meeting, according to the Brunswick News, "then leave these black teachers alone."
But Holmes, then one of two African-Americans on the board, found herself in a pickle. She had been a champion of the international teachers and supported them on her Saturday morning radio show. But the board's attorney had advised her and the other members that the law is the law: No foreign nationals for jobs U.S. citizens can do.
So Holmes and the six other board members voted unanimously not to renew the contracts of the district's five foreign teachers who were not under contract through VIF. The affected teachers included a Jamaican chemistry instructor with a doctorate; an elementary teacher from Scotland with 20 years' experience in Glynn County schools; and two recent hires, both spouses of Jamaican VIF teachers.
Cooper, the human resources director, said her heart broke for the fifth teacher on that list, the one whose second-graders do math in if-you're-happy-and-you-know-it harmonies and always greet outsiders with a polite, "Good morning, visitor, how are you today?"
Support at church, school
Palmer has drawn strength from her church, St. Ignatius Episcopal, as well as the staff at Altama Elementary.
But she said the Jamaican teachers haven't been able to hide completely from false rumors that they're underqualified or getting paid more than local teachers with the same experience. Parents, one as recently as this month, have requested their students be moved to other classes. And once, as Palmer pushed a cart through Winn-Dixie, a shopper took note of her accent.
"Are you one of the Jamaican teachers?" Palmer recalls the man asking.
Yes, she replied.
"Oh, you're one of the ones taking our jobs and making all that money," the man barked.
Palmer said she felt like an unwanted outsider.
A big part of the reason Palmer had came to the United States in the first place was to dispel myths that Jamaica was nothing more than an impoverished banana republic. Students, teachers and parents would see that the country produces world-class educators, too.
But now she woke up each morning afraid of what she would read in the newspaper. "At one point," Palmer said, "we thought maybe we should just all pack up and leave."
Rumors meet ratings
Stephen Kelley, a popular district attorney in southeast Georgia, was among the community leaders who stood up for the teachers. As the father of three children in the public schools, Kelley had heard students rave about the Jamaicans. And three of the teachers had joined his church, Brunswick Seventh-day Adventist.
He grew frustrated at the voices on talk radio calling for the Jamaicans to leave. The teachers, all legal immigrants, had been swept up in the national furor over illegal immigration, he said.
Kelley took his concerns to the school board, showing up unannounced one night. Kelley, who is white, said the teachers were helping fill a void in a community whose best minority role models often leave for opportunities elsewhere.
"It just defied all logic," Kelley said. "They should be begging these people to stay. They should be bringing in more."
But charges that local residents were losing out on teaching jobs endured, said Lauren Nobles, host of the "Straight Talk" morning show on WGIG 1440 AM.
Nobles, himself a critic of the county's reliance on international teachers, begged anyone who had been unfairly turned down for teaching positions to call his show. "But," he said, "I never heard from anyone."
At one point, Superintendent Michael Bull called a meeting of all principals who had international teachers at their schools. Bull, who is white, wanted to hear the unvarnished truth from each principal. Most of the teachers earned sparkling reviews, confirming his suspicion that the problem wasn't with them at all.
"The fuss was about," he said recently, pausing to chose his words carefully, "a couple of individuals that I think just wanted things the way they've always been: 'We want to stick to our local folks. We don't want anyone with a different accent from us.' "
Constitutional questions
Palmer chose not to sue Glynn County schools. But Jamaican teachers Heather Chang and Lorna Johnson, both wives of instructors in the VIF program, did file a lawsuit. And within a month of the board's decision, they had secured a temporary restraining order barring the board from enforcing the immigration statute.
A Russian citizen who teaches in another Georgia school district sued as well. She had been interviewed for a position in Glynn County. But, after the board's vote, she was told she would no longer be considered.
The teachers argued that the State Alien Statute is unconstitutional and violates the 14th Amendment's equal protection clause by discriminating against foreign nationals.
The school board's attorneys countered that Glynn County could not ignore the law. School officials don't have the authority to make constitutional calls on their own, they said.
Senior U.S. District Judge Anthony Alaimo in Brunswick ruled in favor of the teachers in August, declaring the statute unconstitutional and overly broad. Their jobs were no longer in jeopardy.
The school board argued that any damages should be paid by the state and filed a cross-claim against the governor.
Earlier this month, the parties reached a tentative settlement, agreeing to share in a payment to the three teachers and their attorneys.
Strickland, the board member who helped dig up the law, said the payment would total about $57,000. And he bristles at the court's interpretation. Judge Alaimo may be best known as a U.S. bomber pilot who was shot down and injured by the Germans in World War II, then escaping their capture in a dramatic fashion that inspired the movie "The Great Escape." But Alaimo is also an Italian immigrant, Strickland pointed out.
"He still brings that mentality," Strickland said. "He was helping out his fellow out-of-country people."
But Strickland's opinions don't represent those of Glynn County schools anymore. Neither he nor Perry remains on the board.
Perry lost his seat in a landslide, a result he partially attributes to the Jamaican teacher flap. It's unclear whether Strickland would have suffered a similar fate. He decided not to run.
Out with the old
The State Alien Statute may lose its power, too. At the request of Perdue's office, Rep. Greg Morris (R-Vidalia) has introduced a bill to strike it from Georgia's law books. Perdue spokesman Bert Brantley said the governor wants House Bill 605 to pass this session to avoid any repeats of what happened in Glynn County.
The VIF teachers, meanwhile, are in the final months of their three-year stint.
The school district would love to have many of them back, Superintendent Bull said, assuming they can gain temporary worker visas. "I want to find the best-qualified teachers," Bull said. "I really don't care if they're from Jamaica, from France or from South Georgia."
Cooper, who has lost a dress size during the ordeal, said she won't be going to Jamaica anytime soon. "I'd feel guilty recruiting people to come," she said, "not knowing what the climate would be."
As for Palmer, she plans to stay at Altama Elementary, where she recently won teacher of the year. She says there are signs that the controversy has blown over in the Golden Isles.
As she shopped for groceries recently, a man drawn to her accent asked if she was one of the Jamaican teachers. Palmer said yes, and braced for the reaction.
The man, who sits on the board of a private school, scribbled down his phone number.
"Boy, could I use a few of you," Palmer recalled him saying.
Finally, Palmer thought. A stranger had heard her Jamaican accent and thought it the sound of good teaching.
http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/met...tjamaican.html
fuckin backwards ass americans.... fuck it being the land of opportunity its only that way if you white it seems
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