[T]he Burlington School District finally has its man.
After weeks of wrangling to secure a visa for its choice as superintendent, the district last week circumvented obstacles to Yaw Obeng’s hiring by landing him a job as an adjunct professor at the University of Vermont.
That allowed Obeng, a Canadian citizen, to obtain an H1-B visa, which are awarded through a lottery system to a limited number of applicants each year, but that limit does not apply to employees at higher learning institutions, according to United States Citizenship and Immigration Services regulations.
The Burlington School District sought employment at UVM for Obeng for the purpose of avoiding that cap, school board chairman Mark Porter said at a news conference Wednesday morning.
“We knew the college was not subject to the cap,” and the school board’s immigration attorney had advised that a job through UVM’s College of Education and Social Services would offer a relatively straightforward route to an H1-B visa, Porter said.
USCIS representatives declined to comment on the circumstances through which Obeng acquired a visa. An official who wished to remain unnamed wrote in an email that she “can share that USCIS adjudicates all petitions and applications for immigration benefits individually based on the evidence provided and immigration law.”
The congressionally mandated cap of 65,000 H1-B visas per fiscal year was met for fiscal year 2016 by April 7, 2015. More than 230,000 people petitioned for the visas, according to USCIS documents.
Though UVM’s College of Education and Social Services hired Obeng after being approached by the Burlington School District, the college’s interim dean said her school would “absolutely” have hired Obeng without that request.
“This was great serendipity for us,” said Cynthia Gerstl-Pepin, interim dean of UVM’s College of Education and Social Services. “Mr. Obeng’s knowledge about the needs of English language learners, and how to create a positive learning culture for students that supports diversity, will be an asset to our teacher education program as well as [to] Burlington and the state.”
Obeng will teach a course at UVM entitled Language Policy Issues and Race in Learning, Gerstl-Pepin said. The class is new to UVM, and was to be taught by a former faculty member who departed suddenly in July for personal reasons, Gerstl-Pepin said. The course will be offered in the fall and spring semesters, Gerstl-Pepin said.
Obeng will work at UVM as a part-time, or adjunct, faculty member, she said.
The University of Vermont has no policy expressing preference for Vermonters or for United States citizens, Gerstl-Pepin said.
“When we hire faculty members or staff members, we want the best person for the job, and that’s the bottom line,” she said. “We don’t look at those other factors.”
Porter said the Burlington School District likewise sought only the best person for the job, regardless of nationality.
School district administrators knew at the outset of the selection process that Obeng’s citizenship status represented a hurdle to his hiring, but they were determined to obtain legal employment status for him once he was chosen, Porter said after the press conference.
“We knew he was not a U.S. citizen, and that he would need to be able to work legally in the U.S., and that’s why we hired an immigration lawyer,” Porter said. “We were never given guarantees by our immigration attorney … [but] they said they’d exhaust all options, and we were like, ‘That’s great, because so will we.’”
The district spent approximately $16,000 beyond what was originally allocated for the superintendent search to hire Obeng, Porter said. The school district had originally set aside $40,000 for the search, he said.
The district will likely spend additional money to secure a different type of visa that offers Obeng an easier path to citizenship, Porter said.
Obeng, who was superintendent of a school system in Ontario, stood out among candidates for his past success in working with schools that had wide income disparities, Porter said.
These are challenges Obeng will need to meet in his new role at Burlington School District, Porter said.
Obeng’s salary is $153,000.
