ST. CROIX — The Virgin Islands Department of Education has made known via a press release issued on Monday that it will import 38 teachers from the Dominican Republic and the Philippines (the breakdown per country was not revealed) to teach in the territory’s education system, which has been struggling to retain educators from the territory as salaries haven’t increased in nearly a decade, and they remain noncompetitive with other markets on the mainland.
The off-island teachers will instruct students in physical education, social studies, math and science, the press release further stated. It also made known that there are 120 teachers in the department’s current substitute pool (territory-wide) who will be used throughout both districts. And DOE is currently in talks with Education officials in Puerto Rico to begin recruiting teachers from the nearby island into the territory. These teachers are expected to instruct in a variety of subject areas.
Puerto Rico has seen dozens of schools closed during its financial crisis. Driven by a combination of budget cuts and declining enrollment, the loss of so many schools has had a profound impact on communities in the Commonwealth, forcing many children to commute to new campuses and creating a blight in places already hard-hit by recession, according to the New York Times.
The government says the situation could get much worse. It recently warned that by early 2016 it may run out of money to pay its bills, and over the next five years it may have to close nearly 600 of the 1,460 public schools that once existed to save $249 million a year. Currently, there are 1,387 schools across the island, according to The Times.
The situation has also left an overabundance of unemployed educators on the island, an unfortunate circumstance that’s working in the territory’s favor as it struggles to find willing candidates who are often attracted by incentives and high pay.
In a Letter to the Editor published on The Consortium in October of 2014, former DOE Commissioner Donna Frett-Gregory revealed that “29 employees territory-wide made clear their intention to leave just weeks before the start of the 2014-2015 school year, and an extra 10 employees sent in notice they would be leaving, effective at the end of September 2014. [DOE] also has a large number of individuals that could potentially retire at the end of this year because they have fulfilled the 30 years of service requirement,” Frett-Gregory said in October.
At a Committee on Finance budget hearing at the Frits E. Lawaetz Conference Room in Frederiksted on Friday July 10, Senator Kurt Vialet warned of pending disaster if the government didn’t find a way to raise teachers’ wages. The freshman Democrat said he’d recently received information that revealed a mass exodus of the territory’s teachers to the U.S. mainland in the upcoming school year — many moving to Florida — because they weren’t receiving the pay that they deserve in the territory.
“In order to be a teacher you have to go away, get a bachelor’s degree — a number of them have masters degrees — and we have teachers who are in the system, who have been teaching now for eight years with a master’s degree, making $31,000 and have a tremendous amount of student loans,” Vialet said.
“So at some point we have to be creative as to how we’re going to be able to address their needs.”
While DOE highlights its substitute pool of teachers as backup, former DOE Commissioner Frett-Gregory said in her letter that “it is not the same as being able to give our students the same highly qualified, permanent teacher that can be there for them on a continuous basis.” And historically, the teachers who are imported to the territory use the islands as a catapult to propel their careers forward after initial contracts have expired, according to educators. So the ongoing effort to keep teachers in the territory perpetuates because the underlying issue of wages has not be addressed.
Meanwhile, the Mapp administration trimmed $12 million off DOE’s 2016 budget blaming dwindling resources as the cause. The reduction was part of a government-wide 8 percent reduction in light of the territory’s financial woes.
Tags: department of education, teacher shortage, us virgin islands, virgin islands
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