International teachers fill void in fast-growing Lexington 1 school district

Foreign-born teachers have filled a substantial need in rapidly growing Lexington 1 schools.

During the past six years, the district has hired 31 language teachers through one of five state-approved sponsoring organizations that provide teachers from other nations, a district spokeswoman said.

Educational Partners International, based in Black Mountain, N.C., has sponsored the 20 language instructors currently teaching in the district, spokeswoman Mary Beth Hill said. That is the company that sponsored Hianlucas Isturiz Rodriguez, who has been charged with sexually assaulting a student at a district elementary school.

Rodriguez, 40, was educated in Venezuela and taught there before being hired in August 2014 at Red Bank Elementary School as a Spanish teacher, Hill said. Lexington County deputies announced a week ago that charges had been filed and they are looking for him.

The district has not cut its ties to the company, the spokeswoman said.

Lexington 1 has 30 schools and an enrollment that is approaching 25,000, which makes it the second largest in the Midlands. In the past 15 years, 13 new schools have opened and about 500 new students enroll yearly, causing overcrowding, district officials have said.

The district stretches through the towns of Pelion, Lexington and Gilbert as well reaching to the communities of Oak Grove and Red Bank. It employs about 1,900 teachers, according to state figures.

The most recent numbers available from the state Department of Education show that during the 2015-2016 school year, Lexington 1 hired 19 teachers with international teaching certificates. That ranked the district behind only Richland 1 and Sumter 1, with 82 and 53 foreign-born teachers, respectively. Orangeburg 5 matched Lexington 1’s 19 hires.

The Education Department has not compiled employment figures statewide for the current school year. But last year’s total was 430, with the largest single educational discipline being Spanish followed by mathematics, according to the agency’s report.

International teachers also expose students to cultures other than their own, state Superintendent of Education Molly Spearman has said.

The trend of hiring foreign teachers has grown as educators have warned that school districts are having difficulties finding enough qualified teachers.

At the start of the 2014-15 school year, districts reported about 340 unfilled positions, a 25 percent increase from the previous year, according to Winthrop University’s Center for Educator Recruitment, Retention and Advancement.

It’s especially tough to attract teachers to rural districts, which often lack the amenities that appeal to young teachers and whose salaries often are not competitive.

While international teachers make up about 1 percent of all teachers in South Carolina, the percentage is much higher in some districts.

The Education Department began looking to international teachers in the late ’90s, Spearman has said. “We had a really severe teacher shortage, and there were just not enough candidates for the jobs.”

This story was originally published May 7, 2017 at 5:28 PM with the headline "International teachers fill void in fast-growing Lexington 1 school district."