Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities

Exchange program at CHS means teachers, too

CLOVIS — With an ongoing need for teachers, Clovis schools have doubled down this year on a different kind of cultural exchange program.

It started in 2015 with the recruitment of three teachers on a temporary visa from India. Last year, seven more from the subcontinent joined them. This year, the district welcomed an additional 16 educators of international origin - this latest group with individuals from India, Mexico, Spain and the Philippines.

Administrators convened the newest group Friday morning for a meeting of introductions and encouragement.

"We want you to be successful teachers and have happy lives while you're here," Clovis Municipal Schools Superintendent Jody Balch told them. "This could be the new face of public education in America."

The new instructors are distributed across schools in the district and teaching all variety of subjects — from elementary grades to special education, from mathematics and biology to English and U.S. history.

With few exceptions, they are richly experienced — among the 15 teachers gathered Friday, there were nearly 150 years of background in the profession.

"You may be new to the curriculum and new to Clovis, but you are not new to teaching," said Assistant Superintendent of Human Resources Kerry Parker. "We need your experience."

Parker, in an interview after the gathering, emphasized the mutually beneficially aspect of the arrangement, premised on the district's excess of job openings and the international teachers' desire to work in the United States.

"We haven't had a 100 percent fill rate for probably the last four years. We have been experiencing a constant need," Parker said. "We still have 11 certified openings right now. From our perspective they are providing a wonderful service, and they are not taking jobs from anyone."

Administrators were "trying to be creative" two years ago after they had explored local recruitment efforts with little success, Parker said. She became aware of resources for identifying candidates in other countries, whereby a foreign hire can obtain a J1 "cultural exchange" visa to work for three years in the U.S.

"It's not just Clovis — there are shortages in New Mexico and all over the U.S.," said Colin Taylor, president of Presidio Teach International Recruitment and Consulting out of San Jon. "The deal is that there's not enough qualified people to do the job, so (school districts) end up having substitutes in classrooms or no teacher at all, and they have to look at alternatives. And that's where I come in."

Taylor said he primarily works with districts in New Mexico and Arizona, but the company has also assisted in supplying teachers to South Carolina and Arkansas.

"I've always said 'Wow, it takes a lot for someone to move across the world and go somewhere where they don't know anyone,' but these folks do pretty well at that."

Many of the J1 visa holders plan to return to their home countries with insights from their work abroad, but the option remains to extend the visa by two years or angle for longer-term residencies.

"From the J1 they can work towards the H1B," said Janice Bickert, whose company Total Teaching Solutions has assisted Clovis as well as communities in Roswell and Gallup in connecting with Filipino teachers.

The H1B visa permits a slightly longer residency before renewal and provides a clearer path to a green card, said Bickert's husband and Ruidoso Municipal Schools Superintendent George Bickert.

"We used to be able to get teachers on an H1B, but immigration laws change frequently and parameters around them change," he said. "The J1 is a cultural exchange visa and so it's a sharing of cultures, when they come over and when they go back."

"The number of new teachers, especially in southeast New Mexico, isn't matching the number of teachers retiring and moving on. This may be a stop gap measure to fill in, or it could be a permanent solution to get really good teachers into New Mexico, which we really need."

Of Clovis' new arrivals this year, 10 are from India, four from the Philippines and one each from Mexico and Spain.

Dorcas Cigga, a special education teacher at Clovis' Freshman Academy, lives now with her sister who came here in 2015 with the pilot group of three educators. Her brother and father are still in Hyderabad, India.

Others are here without any preexisting connections — Laura Elizalde, teaching middle school Spanish, said she is waiting for her husband in Navarre, Spain, to get his work permit and hopefully come here next year.

Manlio Zamora, teaching third grade, came here with his family from Matamoros, a Mexican city opposite the Rio Grande River from Brownsville, Texas.

Zamora has a car here, but many of the new teachers do not.

Excy Mae Shyl Eleccion said Clovis is quite a bit quieter than her hometown of Cagayan de Oro City, Philippines. There, a bus, train or taxi could take you anywhere, while here the public transportation is limited to Clovis Area Transit System.

If there's one major issue for the newcomers' adjustments, said Parker, it's been with getting around.

"That's frustrating, let me tell you, for their sake," she said. "(Many of them) come with no transportation and so they're really dependent on our mass transit. We depend on that CATS bus."

Yet the scheduling needs of the various teachers across disparate schools has challenged the limits of that system, she added. Many of the teachers do a lot of walking.

Administrators at the meeting Friday emphasized their desire to help connect the new staff with the town's various resources - hospitals, churches, gyms, cell phone providers and housing, to name a few.

"Clovis is a very giving community, and truly we want to help," said Human Resources Director Mandy Carpenter. "If you need something, please let us know."

Before concluding their meeting, the teachers put on their new purple Wildcat T-shirts and posed for a group photo. They were advised their staff credentials would grant them admission to that night's football game, one involving a storied local rivalry.

Their photographer, Human Resources Executive Assistant Malinda Clinton, counted them down: "On three, let's say 'Beat Hobbs!'"