Short News

Chicago's education system desperately looking for foreign teachers

After tough four-year negotiations between the INS and the Department of Labor and the schools of Chicago, they have come up with a unique system for hiring foreign teachers - recruiting abroad. Every year, the city of Chicago hires 1,700 new teachers, but more than 400 couldn't be found last year.

The city council is hoping that the Global Educators Outreach Program can solve the lack of teachers, especially in the fields of mathematics, natural sciences, and foreign languages. Experts expect that over the next 10 years, the US will need to hire 2.2 million new teachers, not including the jobs that become available because older teachers retire or quit.

The foreign teachers would probably have to use the H-1B Visa. Candidates who need to be fluent in English will be picked by the responsible school boards and the US consulates abroad. They will also have to take a test at the Department of Education of the state of Illinois. Six persons have already entered the program and will start working at the beginning of the year.

Elian Gonzalez

In the case of the boy who had fled from Cuba and whose mother had drowned on the run and whose father is now insisting he return to Cuba, it now looks like the father had actually paid the travel costs for his family. After the accident he chose that it was safer to work with Castro than to go to prison for treason for a few years.

That, at least, is the newest rumor spreading in the US media. Since the case is being blown out of proportion by both sides, objective reports become more and more unlike anyway.