Palmdale Schools Hire 30 Teachers From Canada

To hire teachers in anticipation of the state’s class size reduction program, Palmdale schools scoured the country. But not this one.

Thirty Canadians have traded the snow of their homeland for the desert sun of the Palmdale School District, where the first arrivals began work Friday. The hirings capped a four-month search to fill 92 positions created by new state incentives to shrink primary grade classes to 20 students each.

Their employment points to the urgency among public school districts to attract experienced teachers: California university teaching programs produced about 5,000 graduates this year to fill about 20,000 jobs available statewide.

“We wanted a caliber of teachers with experience and credentials, and by the time we started our search in late July most of those teachers in California had been hired,” said Palmdale Supt. Nancy Smith. “So in order to get some real talented teachers, we tossed out a wider net.”

Other school districts also have extended their search beyond California’s borders. Officials at the Los Angeles Unified School District traversed the country during the spring and summer looking for as many as 2,600 teachers to fill the vacancies created by the class size reduction program, which began at most of the district’s first- and second-grade classes in September.

The 17,000-student Palmdale district is waiting until January to implement 20-student classes in the first, second and third grades.

“Because we were starting the search late, we needed to be more creative about our method of looking for teachers,” Smith said.

State officials don’t keep track of how many school districts hire teachers from other countries. Yvonne Novelli, of the Commission on Teacher Credentialing in Sacramento, said it is rare.

*

Los Angeles Unified, however, has long hired teachers from Mexico for bilingual classes, and it hired 15 this year, said Michael Acosta, a personnel administrator for the district. But Acosta was surprised by the large number of foreign teachers hired by Palmdale, a relatively small school district.

“I think it’s pretty large for that size school district,” he said. “Outside of Mexico, we haven’t gone to other countries. We’ve never gone to Canada.”

In pursuing an international search, Palmdale officials say they got lucky.

“Canada was reorganizing their educational system, and they had some people who were laid off,” Smith said. “So we just kind of sent up a trial balloon to see how many people were interested, and we got an overwhelming response.”

Palmdale’s search had taken officials to Oklahoma, Texas, Washington, Idaho and Arizona, and resulted in 18 hires. The district also hired many teachers from among its substitutes and from a pool of applicants from past years.

But it was in Canada where they struck gold.

Judy Fish, Palmdale’s assistant superintendent of educational services, went to Ontario in September to interview nearly 60 applicants.

“We’ve had three times as many people call us as I’ve been able to interview,” said Fish, who received her teaching degree from an Ontario university and had remained in contact with educators there.

“They’ve continued to call from Canada even though we have the number of teachers we need,” she said.

Jeff Pettipas was preparing to leave Canada to teach elementary school in London when he heard of the jobs in Palmdale. The 26-year-old Toronto native quickly rejected the idea of teaching in Europe.

“It seemed like there were better opportunities here than in London,” Pettipas said in a telephone interview from his temporary home at a Palmdale motel. “For one, the pay in California is better.”

New teachers will receive about $27,000 a year, Fish said. But Pettipas and most of his colleagues from Canada have classroom experience and degrees in education that will earn them about $29,000.

Pettipas earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in education before working as a special education teacher in Canada, only to have massive layoffs sour his view of educational opportunities there. That also pushed Ontario native Heidi Janzen to look elsewhere.

“There’s absolutely no jobs here for teachers, there hasn’t been for quite some time,” Janzen said. “And it doesn’t look like it’s going to get any better.”

Janzen, 24, was working as a nanny and volunteering at a school when she agreed to teach third grade in Palmdale.

“I need a job and I’ve always wanted to teach,” Janzen said. “I’m willing, like these 29 others, to go anywhere we can to do what we want to do.”

Janzen, Pettipas and the other newly hired Canadian teachers must apply for work permits and meet state teacher requirements. Teachers here must pass the California Basic Educational Skills Test to get a teaching permit but can get emergency permits that temporarily waive some state requirements.

The Palmdale newcomers will undergo two months of training at the district before beginning their classroom assignments in January.