When a “battle for talent” in New Haven schools sent a teaching recruiter searching far and wide, she reported striking gold in Puerto Rico.
In a meeting earlier this week, the school board’s Administration and Finance Committee approved renewal of a contract in the amount of $62,000 with a consultant, Jennifer Daddio, who has helped over the years with teacher recruitment.
Will Clark, the school board’s chief operating officer, said that staff-wise the system is in good shape and in fact recruitment is already focused not on September 2008 but September 2009.
“Like other school systems,” he said, “we battle for talent.”
That battle has produced five or six highly experienced teachers recruited over the summer from Puerto Rico. Rick Abbatiello, the committee chair, lauded the recruitment, and praised the choices of teachers not only accomplished in their subject areas, with bilingual ability, and in each case, he said, some 14 or 15 years of teaching experience. “I think it reflects well on us,” he said, “that we are willing to invest in the travel to Puerto Rico and the other expenses and to bring, at good salaries, these highly qualified teachers into the city’s classrooms.”
Reading Coaches Saved
Clark also announced that the 19 experienced reading coaches who lost their positions in the state-funded Early Reading Success program have all been retained within the school system through internal transfers. Their jobs were cut when the state ended funding to the program.
“I’m confident we will have filled all the holes by September,” said Clark.
<b>I am absolutely appalled.</b> With all the New Haven residents (and other CT residents) who are seeking education positions, the city goes to Puerto Rico to hire teachers? I thought the ID cards were bad enough, then the city wants to take the question about criminal records off job applications, and now highly qualified US residents are being overlooked for jobs so they can be filled with non-US residents. So to all the qualified US teachers who weren't hired by New Haven...you are probably better off anyway...who wants to work for a city that values non US citizens over its own residents?