Pinoy teachers in Maryland get more money but may lose jobs

WASHINGTON – It was good news and bad news for hundreds of Filipino teachers in Prince George’s County in Maryland.

They received word on Thursday they will be reimbursed fees they paid in connection with their recruitment, about $4,000 each, but now face the threat their visas will not be renewed on expiry.

Millet Panga of Task Force Bayanihan expressed shock at news the H-1B visas of Filipino teachers would not be renewed and said they were meeting lawyers, community leaders and embassy officials to plot a course of action to delay or stop implementation of the ban on visa extensions.

About 1,000 foreign teachers, the bulk of them Filipinos, were caught in a dispute between the Prince George’s County Public Schools and the US Labor Department over who should pay H-1B visa fees incurred in their recruitment.

The Labor Department said Prince George’s County should have paid the fees instead of the foreign teachers.

It ruled that the county should pay the foreign teachers, about 800 of them Filipinos, $4.2 million in back pay and fined it $1.7 million for willful violation of a statute.

In a settlement announced on Thursday before a hearing was scheduled, Prince George’s County Public Schools (PGCPS) agreed to pay the Labor Department $4.2 million to be distributed to the foreign teachers based on the fees each was required to pay. The county also agreed to a $100,000 penalty.

Labor Department spokeswoman Elizabeth Alexander said as part of the settlement, the school system will not be permitted to extend the visas, under which about 800 teachers will be working in the 2011-2012 school year, or petition for new visas for two years.  

PGCPS spokesman Briant Coleman in an email to the Maryland Community News Online Gazette.Net said over the next seven months about 250 employees’ visa would expire.

“Obviously, this is not the outcome we had hoped for as these employees have provided an exceptional service to our school district,” said the Prince George’s Public Schools in a statement.

“PGCPS did everything possible to retain these excellent and valued employees. However, in the final analysis of the current state of our shrinking school budget and mounting legal fees, we determined that we simply could not afford to continue to operate this program.”

Filipino teachers interviewed before the ruling came out said they’d rather keep their jobs and stay long enough to become a permanent US resident than get any back pay.

Prince George’s County brought Filipino teachers in by the hundreds in the past decade to comply with the No Child Left Behind federal law.