Trump’s new visa fee hampers teacher hiring in California

from Sophie Sullivan and Alina TaCalMatters

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There’s a new cost to hiring an international worker to fill a vital but otherwise vacant classroom position in California: $100,000.

In September, the Trump administration began requiring American employers to pay $100,000 sponsorship fee for new H-1B visas, above is already required visa application fees, which range from $9,500 to $18,800, depending on various factors. These visas allow skilled and accredited workers in multiple job sectors to remain in the US

Most H-1B foreign workers in California work in the technology sector. But California also relies on H-1B visas to address another problem: a nationwide teacher shortage and high demand for personnel in bilingual education and special education in K-12 districts.

Data from the California Department of Education shows school districts filed more than 300 visa applications for the 2023-24 school year, double the number from just two years earlier. Educators and school officials say their overseas visa workers are highly skilled, help with multilingual education and fill historically understaffed positions in special education.

Now, education leaders are sounding the alarm that high foreign worker surcharges will worsen the strain on California’s public education system.

International officers fill a much-needed gap for school districts

California continues to face a persistent teacher shortage. In 2023, K-12 schools in California will fill 46,982 positions with employees whose credentials do not match their job duties, according to data from the California Commission on Teacher Accreditation. Another 22,012 educator positions have remained vacant this year. Of the total number of misassignments and vacancies, about 28% were in English language development and 11.9% were in special education.

California school districts have also resorted to hiring teachers who have not yet obtained certain credentials, according to a study by the nonprofit Institute for Learning Policy. Faced with a need for teachers, school districts have found that trained professionals from other countries are willing — and qualified — to fill classroom jobs that would otherwise go unfilled.

In 2023, in the Bay Area east of San Francisco, the West Contra Costa Unified School District had 381 misallocated positions and 711 vacancies, according to the commission. So the district turned to foreign educators, hiring about 88 teachers on H-1B visas — the majority from the Philippines, Spain and Mexico — to teach mostly in bilingual and special education programs, said Sylvia Greenwood, the district’s assistant superintendent of human resources.

“With our special education shortage, they were a good fit for our district. So, that’s why we kept that process open and brought teachers here from the Philippines to support our students and our special needs students,” Greenwood said.

The decline in the number of credentialed special education teachers continues to worsen. Between 2020 and 2024, the number of special education teaching credentials earned dropped by nearly 600 in California, according to data from the California Commission on Teacher Accreditation. The number of temporary permits and refusals issued by the commission increased by about 300 for the same period.

Francisco Ortiz, president of United Teachers of Richmond and a teacher at Ford Elementary School in West Contra Costa, said the district’s teacher workload will increase if West Contra Costa Unified fails to attract new international teachers.

That would create “more instability” for students, he said, adding, “It’s going to have a big impact on special education, which is already on fire.”