Below is some recent media coverage from the Shreveport Times website. I hope it was better edited than our tangible, printed newspaper *hangs head in shame*
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Oct 7th, Shreveport Times' website article:
Exploitation of workers, foreign or domestic, is usually an injustice we presume is more common to the poorly educated and economically desperate.
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That it would happen to college-educated teachers is both shocking, as Caddo Parish Superintendent Gerald Dawkins termed it, and a testament to the powerful lure of a job in America.
If only part of the allegations made by a state teachers union about what Universal Placement International charged Filipino teachers to work in four school districts are true, it's an outrage.
Where were the safeguards presumably built into our immigration system that would ferret out disreputable recruiters bringing in foreign workers ?
As for Caddo Parish school administrators, eager to fill vacant classroom slots, just how much research did they do on either the company or the contracts these teachers labored under?
Caddo looked to the Philippines for 43 teachers last year to fill key positions in math, science, special education and English. A total of five Louisiana districts hired 200. LFT only looked at four districts.
It's no secret that the teachers lived on tight budgets. Their new Caddo colleagues had been known to enlist Sunday school classes to collect basic supplies to help the Filipino teachers make their transition into a new setting.
And no doubt the teachers were ready to pay a significant price to teach in the United States.
But the Louisiana Federation of Teachers, in its complaints filed with the state Attorney General's Office and the Louisiana Workforce Commission, allege that the teachers paid too dear a price, cheated out of thousands of dollars by Universal Placement Services of Los Angeles.
Universal is said to have initially charged $6,600 in fees covering costs including training, travel, medical exams, legal fees and visas. It then required the teachers to pay an additional placement fee of 20 percent of their first year's gross income. Those fees ranged from $8,000 to $10,000 per teacher depending on their projected salary.
The LFT, whose members have a stake in how districts fill positions, also alleges that Universal referred the teachers to predatory lending agencies to cover the fees — agencies that charged interest rates of 3 to 5 percent per month. More fees and expensive legal entanglements included contracts in which the teachers agreed to pay 10 percent of their monthly income to Universal for 24 months, and fees for annual visa renewals.
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OK, outrage may be too mild a term.
School Board minutes from last August show that at least two School Board members raised concerns. Charlotte Crawley asked what have proven to be on-point questions about the teachers' visas, their housing, Caddo's contractual commitment and how Universal made its money. Tammy Phelps asked interim Superintendent Wanda Gunn why the board had not been informed that the district was looking to the Philippines to fill classroom slots.
Paul Vallas, who heads the state Recovery School District, told the Associated Press his system hired 19 teachers through Universal in 2007 but later switched to the nonprofit Teach for America. "When for-profit companies are too eager to offer us things, that always makes us a bit suspicious."
Vallas said Universal was vetted by the state as part of its procurement process.
Solving our teacher shortages is critical if we are to ensure the best education for our children. But what was once viewed as a resourceful answer to filling these gaps has now become a huge embarrassment. It deserves now a full investigation. And wherever fault lies, let's hope hard lessons have been learned.
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Oct 8th
The latest article from Shreveport Times' website:
The same month three Caddo school employees traveled to the Philippines to hire teachers with the help of a recruiter, officials at Louisiana’s Recovery School District decided not to renew its contract with the company.
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The Recovery School District, which hired 19 Filipino teachers in New Orleans, decided against renewing its contract with Universal Placement International when it ended in June 2008.
But not even state Education Superintendent Paul Pastorek, who signed the contract, knew it was not renewed, he said during a meeting Wednesday with The Times’ editorial board.
“I did not know about it and would not know about it. Nor would the board,” said Pastorek, who had visited Oak Park MicroSociety Elementary School earlier that day.
And the same month the Recovery School District decided not to renew the contract, Caddo school administrators traveled to Manila to hire teachers. The Caddo officials also didn’t know the contract was not renewed. Caddo hired 43 teachers to work in difficult-to-place areas such as special education and math.
Last week, the Louisiana Federation of Teachers submitted a complaint to the Louisiana Workforce Commission and the state attorney general’s office on behalf of more than 200 Filipino teachers who claim they had to pay about $15,000 each to apply for jobs in U.S. school districts. And once they were here, they paid 10 percent of their monthly salary to Universal Placement International and were threatened with harm to their families back home if they didn’t pay, the complaint alleges.
According to the Recovery School District’s contract with the recruiter, which is part of the union’s complaint, the accord was in effect July 1, 2007, to June 30, 2008. It was signed Sept. 28, 2007, by several state Education Department officials, including Pastorek, Paul Vallas, superintendent of the Recovery School District, Ollie Tyler, the state’s deputy education superintendent, and Linda Job, president of the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education.
In the contract, the state agreed to pay Universal Placement International $2,500 to $50,000 for each candidate. The state paid a total of $47,500 to the recruiting company.
Pastorek said he didn’t know exactly how the Education Department came to do business with Universal Placement International. He became state superintendent March 2007, after initial talks with the recruiter had started, he said.
One of Pastorek’s initial tasks when he took the position was to find 650 teachers for the Recovery School District in New Orleans. As more post-Katrina students were returning, the district “cast a broad net” to recruit new teachers, he said.
“It was really begun before I walked into the door. It began in the Recovery School District in New Orleans by the people down there. They were talking to this company, the New Teacher Project, and to a number of different recruiters.
“When Paul Vallas came in, we ultimately consummated an agreement to bring in Filipino ladies. And we brought in a number of other people, out-of-staters. … That was all being done in the Recovery School District.”
The Recovery School District can’t process a contract, meaning it can’t enter into an agreement for itself, Pastorek said. The district can negotiate a contract but has to make a recommendation to the state Education Department to enter an agreement.
“We have some people up there who actually do the processing, the checking and evaluation to make sure it meets standards and so on and so forth,” Pastorek said. “To be honest with you, I never knew about this specific contract. … All I knew is that we got the teachers, and that’s all I really cared about at the end of the day.”
The state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, the governing entity for the Recovery School District, reviewed but did not approve the contract, Pastorek said. Contracts for less than $50,000 don’t have to be approved by the state education board but are listed among other contracts and are part of the public record, he said. And when that contract was not renewed, Pastorek said, it did not have to be brought in front of the board.
The contract with Universal Placement International was not renewed was because the company was “pushy,” the state education superintendent explained.
“There was some sense on the part of our HR department in their dealing with them that there seemed to be a pushiness to them. That they were pushing too hard for the business and it made our people feel uncomfortable. “
But the ultimate decision to not renew the UPI contract was not his, Pastorek said. “The decision whether or not to renew a contract is left up to the Recovery School District. Paul Vallas makes that decision.”
There is a vetting process companies have to go through to do business with the Education Department, Pastorek said. “One of the things we’re looking at, because we contracted directly with the company through the Recovery School District, we’re looking at our process to determine if our process is weak or our execution of the process was weak. I have some people doing the research on that; we’ll have a fix on that here pretty soon.”
Despite the process, some things just fall through the cracks, Pastorek said. “I think that school district or the RSD, we execute a lot of contracts with a whole lot of people and, you know, I think in spite of best efforts, you’re going to run into people who are less scrupulous.
“In this case, I don’t want to say this enterprise is less scrupulous because I haven’t heard from the other side,” Pastorek said. “So I don’t want to rush to judgment. … But one thing I do know as a fact is that the company was not qualified to do business in Louisiana. Sometimes that’s an oversight by businesses who aren’t qualified to do business in Louisiana. … Doesn’t mean that they are scrupulous.”
Pastorek said he has heard positive reports about the Filipino teacher’s abilities but worries that, as a result of the incident, a moratorium would be put on using recruiters to search for employees. “While we need to be concerned about unscrupulous vendors, we can’t throw the baby out with the bath water here.
“There are many good vendors out there who do recruit for schools and school systems,” Pastorek said. “The one concern I have about this discussion is that we go to the opposite end of the spectrum. The concern is that the recruiter made a deal with the people who were being recruited that was onerous.”
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Ok ok so...our local school board in Caddo Parish is ADMITTING that only a portion of them knew that we were recruiting from the Philippines, while others knew nothing of it. Also, they admit that when the contract was up in late 2008 and was not renewed, those who DID know of the contract with the UPI organization supposedly did not know of it not being renewed. Despite the contract NOT being renewed, locals here in Shreveport decided to go to Manila to recruit more teachers. They admit they went through a shady company whose contract had not been renewed to acquire underpaid teachers and rob them of what little they have to their name. And some of the school board members are just now learning of this whole fiasco. Only a few people knew what was going on, apparently. Those who knew the full story were (and this is just my theory!) probably fucking assholes who were bribed.
In addition to all this, our state had no RIGHT to do business with such an organization! Regardless of the fact that UPI is shady, they have no office in Louisiana. According to the Louisiana state law, the company is guilty of the following:
• Failure to maintain an office in Louisiana. State law requires an “onsite manager for that location, or an on-site consultant who has successfully passed the private employment service examination.”
• Failure to provide a $5,000 bond to the state.
• Failure to post all the appropriate licenses to operate, an approved applicant schedule of fees, and copies of the Rules and Regulations Governing Private Employment Services.
• Illegally collecting fees from both the employer and the applicant.
• Illegally charging teachers employed in Louisiana fees prior to arriving in the state.
• Illegally charging fees to applicants who were never employed by a Louisiana school system.
This is taken straight from the official complaint filed on behalf of the teachers in Louisiana against the company.
The company is guilty of the crimes, but Louisiana allowed it to happen. We let it happen. This is sick.
By the way, did I mention how embarrassed I am about the fact that Louisiana is so out of touch with its educational system? I'm EMBARRASSED!
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