NYC: Mayor acknowledged the City failed Caribbean Teachers
By: Tony Best From Guyanese Online
At Last a Mayor acknowledged the City failed Caribbean Teachers
Almost two decades after hundreds of Caribbean teachers were first wooed to New York City classrooms but left in the lurch a Mayor has acknowledged the City didn’t live up to its promises to the West Indians.
And while Mayor Bill de Blasio who took office in January after his landslide victory in the November elections didn’t say what City Hall would do about the failure of the Board of Education which is now the Department of Education would do about the broken promises, he vowed to ensure that the matter was resolved once and for all.
“Promises to the Caribbean teachers were not kept,” de Blasio told journalists and ethnic media owners and other representatives at a round table session at City Hall which was also attending by the First Lady, Chirlane McCray and senior officials of various agencies including the New York Police Department and the Education Department. “We have to ensure that the situation is dealt with.”
The Black Institute headed by Bertha Lewis, a strong de Blasio supporter during last year’s election campaign has been pressing the Department of Education to ensure the immigration and other problems the teachers faced were resolved after almost 20 years of being left in limbo. Lewis has routinely complained about the visas given to the Jamaicans, Barbadians, Trinidadians, Guyanese and other West Indians by U.S. immigration authorities that allowed them to enter the country and live and work.
“They were given visas that didn’t reflect the teacher’s status as professionals in the classroom,” Lewis said. “The visas were for people who were not highly trained and motivated teachers, some with master’s degree but all with at least a bachelor’s degree. They received visas normally given to people who were hourly paid employees. In addition, the children of the teachers who came with them were never given the appropriate immigration status that would allow them to succeed in the country. Through all of these challenges, the Caribbean teachers worked well in the classroom and justified their presence in City schools.”
The teachers were first brought to the City at the start of the Rudolph Giuliani Administration at the height of a teacher shortage. They immediately ran into housing problems and payment of their salaries. Some had to for unusually long periods of time without being paid.
Congressman Major Owens who represented the historic 11th Congressional District in Brooklyn that had sent the late Shirley Chisholm to Capitol Hill in the 1968 election as the first Black woman in the chamber’s history had pressed the case of the teachers in Washington and New York guaranteeing their ability to remain in the country.
“The Caribbean teachers were not treated well by the City which should have ensured that they were given the appropriate immigration status and their children who came with them should have been better protected as well,” asserted Lewis.
The mayor told the journalists that it was Lewis and the Institute that had drawn the lingering problems of the teachers to his attention.
PHOTO: Mayor Bill de Blasio
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