Administrators like Delgado were caught off-guard, as they were actively recruiting teachers and already scrambling to adapt to an academic year amid a pandemic. It cut the number of foreign workers hired on the country’s most common teaching visa in half nationwide. The ban added to the country’s growing teacher deficit, leaving many schools with dozens — sometimes hundreds — of unfilled positions at the start of the school year.
Those teachers would have served some of America’s most vulnerable kids, administrators say. “Eighty-eight of the teachers that we had offered jobs to are special education teachers, which is a critical shortage, not only in Nevada, but nationally,” said Jesus Jara, superintendent of the Clark County School District.