Between a nationwide teacher shortage and challenges building a diverse teaching staff, Waukegan Community Unit School District 60 started casting a wider net, including hiring 31 in the last three years from Puerto Rico.
The District 60 Board of Education got a briefing on current efforts to keep its corps of approximately 1,100 teachers staffed during a meeting of its Operational Services Committee last Tuesday at Waukegan High School’s Brookside campus.
Along with traditional methods of recruitment like job boards, referrals and digital platforms, Angel Figueroa, the districts associate superintendent for human resources and employee benefits, started recruiting teachers from Puerto Rico and Spain in 2018, and the Philippines last year.
With a Latinx enrollment approaching 80%, Figueroa said finding teachers who share a first language with students is important. Teachers from Puerto Rico in particular meet that need with no immigration issues, and a background enabling them to easily become licensed in Illinois.
“We believe our staff should mirror the diversity present in our nation as our district aspires to provide our students with an enriched educational experience that facilitates learning and acceptance from each other, and sets them on a journey of success,” Figueroa said at the meeting.
Coming to Waukegan from Puerto Rico himself after serving in the military, Figueroa said he taught bilingual education for six years, was an assistant principal and then principal at North Elementary School before taking his current position. He has been in the district for 30 years.
If he cannot fill the teaching positions with licensed teachers, Figueroa said he must use substitute instructors which he considers an inferior solution. Recruiting from Puerto Rico and internationally helps bring qualified, licensed full time teachers to Waukegan.
“If you have a school with 20 classrooms, that’s three schools,” he said. “We’re doing it with qualified, licensed teachers,” he added in an interview Thursday. “There is an instant rapport with our students.”
Along with hiring 31 teachers from Puerto Rico in the last three years, Figueroa said the district hired 18 from Spain and 13 from the Philippines. The effort in the Philippines was all last year.
On his first recruiting mission to Puerto Rico in 2018, Figueroa hired 18 teachers. Two of them were Rafael Ramon-Melendez, who teaches bilingual social science on the Washington campus of Waukegan High School, and wife, Vivian Torres, a Spanish language arts teacher.
A 21-year educator as a classroom teacher and six years as a principal, Ramon-Melendez was the island’s secretary of education from 2013 through 2017. Figueroa said the position is the equivalent of heading the Illinois State Board of Education.
Ramon-Melendez said after Hurricane Maria ravaged Puerto Rico in 2017, a lot of teachers were out of work. Figueroa arrived that year seeking people to teach in Waukegan and interviewed Torres. When she got an offer, the decisions were easy.
“She said, ‘I’m going with you or without you,'” Ramon-Melendez said during an interview Thursday. “Mr. Figueroa called me, and asked me to come to Waukegan too. We’ve had a very good experience.”
During the interview process, Figueroa said with a laugh weather always comes up. He tells them about the change of seasons, and the ability to travel around the United States. He also has some serious advice.
“I tell them to get a good coat as soon as they land at O’Hare,” he said.
Ramon-Melendez, who also laughed when asked about Waukegan winters, said adjusting to subzero temperatures their first winter here took some doing.
“January of 2019 was just awful,” he said. “From there, it got better.”
Board member Jeff McBride asked at the meeting what was being done to hire more minorities among the teaching and professional staff. He suggested using a consultant. Superintendent Theresa Plascencia mentioned holding a workshop with board members to show them the statistics on the availability of minorities.
“When the board sees the national numbers, along with the state numbers, you’ll see the percentage of people of color that are actually choosing to go into education has declined,” she said.
Figueroa said during the meeting a diverse teaching staff will better prepare Waukegan graduates for the multilayered world they will enter when they seek careers and jobs. They will be prepared for variety in the workplace.
“That’s very important because we have a large minority population in our schools,” Figueroa said. “We need to prepare them to be successful in the job market anywhere they are in the nation. We want to expose them to every type of culture.”
