Program to Recruit Teachers From Spain Flounders in Garvey Schools

When Garvey school officials met six teachers from Spain at Los Angeles International Airport in 1986, the educators had high hopes that the Spaniards might help alleviate some of the problems in a district where half the students are Latino.

Six more Spaniards arrived the next year. But now, controversy swirls around the teacher recruitment program, whose future in Garvey is in doubt.

Eight of the 12 Spaniards have failed the state’s competency test, which all teachers in California must pass to continue teaching. Five of the teachers hired in 1986 were not rehired because they failed the test. The other three took the test this year and the results are pending. They have until June to pass.

The district’s superintendent has resigned, partly over a dispute with the school board over his recommendation that two of the former teachers be retained as substitutes. The teachers union and some board members have voiced wariness of the program, saying there are qualified bilingual teachers in this country who could fill the positions.

‘Needed Teachers Like Us’

“We know they needed teachers like us. Or we thought so,” said Carmen Lopez, one of the teachers who was not rehired last fall.

Lopez still hopes to pass the test. She works part time to make ends meet and spends hours with her colleagues studying English in her San Gabriel apartment.

Because of the criticism of the program in the Garvey School District, the teachers may have to look for jobs elsewhere even if they pass the test. Garvey has 7,404 pupils in kindergarten through eighth grade in Monterey Park, San Gabriel and Rosemead.

“If this program has been successful, I haven’t seen too much evidence of it,” said former school board member Judy Chu.

Added Garvey school board Chairman Jim Smith: “From the start, I had problems with bringing in unknowns from Spain.”

‘Hasn’t Been Successful’

Even board member Gil Barron, who supports the program, says: “It hasn’t been as successful as we needed it to be.”

Larry Walsh, president of the 300-member Garvey teachers union, agrees. “Let’s put Americans to work, before we do this hands-across-the-sea business,” he said.

The issue came to a head last month during an angry debate among school board members. Supt. Andrew J. Viscovich, complaining that Smith had called him a liar during the debate, resigned and stormed out of the room.

“The chief executive officer of this place may not be impugned in public,” Viscovich said in a later interview.

“My intent was not to call him a liar,” Smith said in an interview.

‘Moot Issue’

After Viscovich left the room, the board voted 3 to 2 not to allow Lopez and one other Spaniard to return as substitute teachers, even though they had not passed the competency test.

The board announced Thursday night that it had accepted Viscovich’s resignation, effective at the end of the school year. Viscovich had said earlier that controversy over the program was only one of the reasons he resigned. The main issues, Viscovich said, center on board members’ constant questioning of his integrity and administrative abilities, and their desire to be involved in day-to-day operations of the district.

With Viscovich leaving after nine years as superintendent, the program “is almost a moot issue,” Walsh said.

Despite the problems in Garvey, education officials from elsewhere in California praise the program, which started statewide in 1986. Although only 26 of the 105 Spaniards hired in California districts have passed the California Basic Educational Skills Test, there are plans to expand the project.

“It seems to be working well,” said Fred Tempes, an assistant superintendent for the state Department of Education in charge of the program.

Tempes said the percentage of teachers from Spain who pass the test is increasing as better-qualified teachers are recruited.

‘Working Really Fine’

Jose Anton, who heads the program for the Spanish Ministry of Education and works in that country’s consulate in Los Angeles, said the program is “working really fine at this moment. The first year we had many problems because, you know, everything that begins has some problems.”

Now, he said, “Our best teachers are coming here.” Most of the teachers have the equivalent of master’s degrees, he said, and many of them majored in English.

The teachers, who have work visas, are hired on a temporary basis, and state education officials do not expect them to get permanent jobs.

As examples of increased interest in the program, Anton cited school districts in Los Angeles and Oakland.

This year, he said, four Spaniards are teaching in Oakland and the school district wants 10 more next year. Officials from the Los Angeles Unified School District, which initially expressed reluctance about the program, said they would take as many as 35 teachers from Spain next fall. Spaniards are also teaching in Burbank, Lynwood, Paramount and Palm Springs, he said.

Recruiting in Spain

Kathleen Price, who heads the program in Los Angeles, said educators in her district were not satisfied the first year because they did not go to Spain to recruit. Last year, the results were excellent, she said, because the district sent four administrators to Spain for interviews.

“Their ability to communicate in the English language, believe you me, is excellent,” she said about the teachers.

Everyone acknowledges that the program’s first year got off to a bad start, in the Garvey district and elsewhere.

The Spanish government had approached California education officials because there is a surplus of teachers in Spain.

In Spain, the teachers had been told that they would be teaching only in Spanish, just as many of their countrymen do when they go as teachers to the British Isles. But, they were expected to teach all the subjects in English as well as Spanish.

‘World Fell Apart’

“When I was told I had to teach in English, the world fell apart,” said Mercedes Gonzalez, one of the teachers not rehired last fall.

“We kind of dropped the ball,” said Tempes of the state Department of Education.

Garvey’s chairman Smith said that even when the Spanish teachers spoke in their native tongue, difficulties arose between teachers and students because of different idiomatic usages.

The Spaniards say problems with accents and idioms were not major. Javier Fernandez, a Spaniard who teaches at Garvey’s Hillcrest School in Monterey Park, said he sometimes uses Spanish verbs that his first-graders do not know. “They just look surprised and smile and then say OK, they understand,” he said.

Both Spanish and California educators say they took steps to ensure that the teachers who arrived last fall would be proficient in English. For example, school officials point to Fernandez, who majored in English and who passed the test the first time he took it.

Building Links

Viscovich was among those who recruited Fernandez when the superintendent and other educators traveled to Spain last year on a trip paid for by the Spanish government. Next month nine educators, including Viscovich, will go to Spain on another recruiting trip.

As much as anything else, Tempes said, the program is helping to build links between Spain and California. For example, he said, another aspect of the program will involve 40 California teachers going to Barcelona this summer to study children’s literature.

This is exactly what disturbs Garvey board chairman Smith, who said: “I do feel it’s a politically motivated program that the state Department of Education and the Spanish government are pushing.”

Even if the foreign teachers were well-qualified in all ways, including fluency in English, Smith said that he does not like the program.

“I realize that we need (bilingual) teachers and we need qualified teachers, but we shouldn’t just be bringing them over to have a program,” he said.

Enough Teachers Here

Garvey board member Diane Martinez agrees. “We’ve got qualified bilingual teachers here.”

Also, she said, when she was running for the board last year, parents told her they did not think the teachers were fluent enough in English.

Her opposition, she said, should not be interpreted as being against bilingual education. “For people to say we’re against bilingual education is absurd,” she said. “We know there is a need for bilingual education.”

Tempes said the program is not intended “to meet the demand for bilingual teachers.” That is just part of the program’s purpose, he said, adding that the program would hardly reduce California’s need for 5,000 additional bilingual teachers. He foresees the program providing no more than 100 teachers a year.

Roger Temple, deputy superintendent of Garvey, still supports the program. “We found them to be excellent instructors,” he said. “It’d be nice for them to continue from year to year.”

Other Foreign Teachers

The Spaniards were not the first foreigners hired to teach in Garvey. Viscovich said that four years ago he used vacation time and paid his own way to recruit teachers from Mexico.

One of the first foreign teachers he hired, a Mexican, passed the competency test and is on his way to gaining tenure, Viscovich said.

The foreign teachers in the district, said Harvey Wyma II, principal of Hillcrest School, have in some cases been excellent and in other cases not very good.

Still, he said, he strongly supports the program and has high praise for the Spaniards who have worked at his school.

“The bilingual program is what the issue is here,” Wyma said. Of the two Spaniards who were being considered as substitutes, Wyma said: “They certainly would have been helpful to add to the substitute pool.”

Teaching in L. A. District

Lopez, one of those teachers, said that since she left Garvey last year, she has been teaching Spanish to teachers in the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Soon, she said, she will get the results on her competency test, which she retook recently. Because she has a master’s degree in biology and taught for eight years, she said, she had little difficulty in passing all aspects of the test except for the written part.

Last week, at Lopez’s apartment, she and two of her friends from Spain, Gonzalez and Francisco Lopez, were puzzling over politics, language and education in Southern California.

All three taught at the elementary school level last year in the Garvey district.

“We came here to give something, to teach in Spanish,” Gonzalez said.

“We don’t have anything to do with politics, with syndicates (unions),” Francisco Lopez said. “Here politics and language are mixed up together.”

The main issue, Carmen Lopez said, is that children, no matter where they live or what language they speak, need to “have a person who cares enough for them.”

Gonzalez said: “Then the students can learn better. That’s what a teacher has to do, no matter whether a teacher is Spanish, English, Chinese or anything else.”