In an effort to address the state’s ongoing teacher shortage, an Oklahoma City nonprofit has created a new program to bring educators from Mexico to Oklahoma classrooms despite the risk of xenophobic rhetoric inflaming tensions about immigration issues across America.
Launched ahead of the 2025-2026 school year that begins in August, the program will welcome three initial teacher participants who accepted contracts within the Santa Fe South charter school district. Five teachers were offered positions, but only three ultimately accepted jobs at the OKC-based schools, said Fuel OKC CEO Brent Bushey.
“They’re coming here using an existing legal program,” Bushey said. “They’re choosing to come here and to work and to serve families that desperately need great teachers. So I’m excited about that. I am worried that some of the negative things you hear about immigrant populations may impact those teachers, and I severely hope that my concerns are unfounded and that they’ll be welcomed with open arms as the service-minded individuals that I believe they are.”
Bushey said his own experience relocating to a new state and joining the education workforce through Teach for America helped spur the idea of recruiting and supporting Mexican nationals interested in serving in Oklahoma classrooms. Founded in 2024, Fuel OKC has a mission to “increase the number of quality schools serving residents of Oklahoma City” through new programs and resource support for traditional public schools and charter schools.
Fuel OKC announced a new paraprofessional degree program Feb. 28, and the international teacher pathway program became its second effort to address workforce issues that often leave schools scrambling to fill positions even after each school year begins. The paraprofessional degree program offsets tuition costs for current classroom aides to earn an education-focused bachelor’s degree from Oklahoma Christian University.
The international teacher pathway program aims to fill classroom vacancies with educators who otherwise would not be in Oklahoma.
“As we partner with schools to improve academic outcomes, one of the greatest barriers we face is the lack of well-prepared teachers,” Bushey said in a June 17 press release. “We can have the best strategies, the strongest leadership, but without a qualified teacher in every classroom, student success remains out of reach. We’re committed to changing that by building pathways for passionate, prepared professionals to step into the classroom and stay.”
A severe dip in teacher recruitment and retention over the last decade has forced state leadership, education professionals and now individual stakeholders to focus their attentions on finding solutions to address the nation’s teacher shortage. Although issues remain around teacher salary and support services in Oklahoma, incentive programs and efforts to establish effective workforce pipelines have been at the front of public policy discussions in recent years.
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Oklahoma has relied heavily on the use of emergency teacher certification to fill critical teaching roles, garnering a record high of 4,676 emergency certifications between June and December of the 2023-2024 school year.
Renee Porter, director of programs for Fuel OKC, helped lead conversations about the new partnership with Universidad Popular Autónoma del Estado de Puebla (UPAEP) in Puebla, Mexico. Porter has served on the UPAEP University Foundation’s board of directors for 15 years.
“The university UPAEP has had a partnership agreement with Oklahoma State University since the early ’90s — they have done student exchanges — and then with the University of Oklahoma, it is one of the primary study abroad locations for OU,” Porter said. “Locally, they have a lot of international relationships, it’s a very sophisticated university with a lot of colleges. They have a medical college, nursing, dental school, architecture, engineering and, of course, the college of education. And they have all of those programs, and so creating opportunities, particularly international relationships, has always been very important tenet for the university.”
Following initial conversations with UPAEP’s secretary general and Zoom meetings with other university leaders, Porter and Bushey visited the Puebla campus in September 2024 to hold an informational meeting about the proposed initiative. Even though the visit largely involved meeting university stakeholders and gauging student interest in the proposed program, the project was green-lit later that month.
Almost a year later, Fuel OKC facilitated the hiring of UPAEP graduates within the Santa Fe South district. The process has involved supporting the participants’ legal migration to the U.S. through H-1B visa waivers. Out of 16 applicants, five were offered teaching positions at Santa Fe South, and three accepted.
Bushey learned of Santa Fe South’s existing H-1B visa waiver program after reaching out to an attorney who previously worked with the district to put the waiver program in place. That made the district an attractive option for the new partnership. An H-1B visa allows United States employers to hire “nonimmigrant aliens” with at least a bachelor’s degree to work legally in the U.S. for a specified amount of time.
During a June 19 interview, Santa Fe South Superintendent Chris Brewster proudly said his district has hired educators under H-1B visas even prior to participating in Fuel OKC’s new program. Brewster touted having at least six to eight different H-1B teachers currently working in the district, noting that Santa Fe South — which serves a high percentage of hispanic and English-language-learner students — has consistently hired educators from countries like Peru, Mexico, Columbia and India over the years.
“As pretty much everybody is aware, there is a significant teacher shortage, and candidly, there’s [an] even more worrying shortage of quality teachers, and there are tremendously talented people scattered around the globe who deeply desire to work in the U.S., who don’t find the teacher pay scale intimidating whatsoever if they’re coming from a country similar to Mexico that would pay their professionals significantly less,” Brewster said. “So again, it’s very beneficial to those professionals. It’s extremely helpful to us, and we’re able to get our sort of pick of the litter of candidates.”
Although Santa Fe South was responsible for setting the standard for potential hires — vetting each candidate through its “rigorous” interview process and placing the educators in select positions — Fuel OKC picked up all associated costs related to obtaining the necessary visas, legal assistance, travel expenses, rent payments and apartment furnishings. Santa Fe South is the official employer of the educators and will pay them a “prevailing wage based on education/experience,” according to Porter.
The three participating teachers relocated to OKC the week of July 7 and are expected to begin their work at Santa Fe South in August under a three-year commitment. The teachers will fill positions in elementary-level art, high school-level mathematics and middle school-level writing and social studies.
“When they come in, these are master’s degree-experienced professionals that are fluently bilingual — English and Spanish — and have gone through sort of a rigorous interview vetting process to be selected,” Brewster said. “So this is really the cream of the crop. We’re very excited to have folks who are thrilled and qualified to be coming to serve our kids, and they seem to be deeply excited about it as well.”
‘These teachers should be lauded as heroes’
UPAEP graduate and experienced educator Juan Carlos is set to teach Algebra 2 at Santa Fe South High School through Fuel OKC’s pilot program this fall. He will be joining a school community that experienced fear this spring over increasing immigration raids and a blocked proposal from Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters to collect immigration status data about student families. At least one car-wash fundraiser was organized among SFS families to support a student facing deportation.
While Carlos reported a seemingly smooth visa process, Bushey said UPAEP professors were the first to raise concerns about sending three promising graduates to a conservative American state where immigration rhetoric can be negative.
“(It was) my very first conversation with the professors and leaders at UPAEP, and they said they were looking at the presidential election,” Bushey said. “They were looking at Trump’s rhetoric. They even brought it up, ‘Donald Trump says really bad things about Mexicans, are our kids going to be safe?’ And we said, ‘You know, we don’t know.’ (…) From the first day, even before the rhetoric has pumped up, that’s been a concern of mine. It’s been a concern of the university officials in Puebla, and all I told them was, ‘You know, we’ll do everything we can. We know that the schools needs great teachers. We think that teachers are talented, and anybody that wants to work with our kids, we will do everything we can to defend them.'”
Bushey emphasized that Fuel OKC went to “painstaking lengths” to make use of America’s legal immigration system as it is currently set up.
Despite his former UPAEP professors’ concerns, Carlo said he has learned to be at peace with anti-immigrant rhetoric in America.
“As a foreign person, I believe I have no opinion on how the U.S. manages those type of things,” Carlos said during a June 20 phone interview from Mexico. “I have a strong belief that everything will work out how it must work out. So I don’t think I’m nervous. (…) I don’t believe I’m more nervous now than I was before.”
Instead, Carlos is more concerned about settling into a new country and community, but he said he and his colleagues are excited about the opportunity and hope to have a positive impact on the students at Santa Fe South.
“We are motivated teachers,” Carlos said. “We want to make a change, and we’re willing to go away from our families to actually make a change. (…) We’re going 2,000 miles away from our homes. We will, for the next three years, we will talk another language that is not ours, and we are extremely excited about it. We’re not scared, we’re excited to actually go and give a class. And I think that’s really, really pretty. And I think that’s what teaching is about.”
Santa Fe South leaders required the three educators participating in the program to be bilingual in English and Spanish, owing to the number of students in the district coming from dual-language households. Both Bushey and Porter noted that recruiting international teachers creates an opportunity for the majority Hispanic demographic at Santa Fe South to learn from teachers with whom they can identify.
“We’ve identified folks who will be coming here to serve children and families,” Bushey said. “And you know, over 90 percent of the time, over 95 percent of the students at Santa Fe South are on free and reduced lunch. A majority of the kids are from immigrant families. So to me, these teachers should be lauded as heroes.”
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Paraprofessionals turned ‘teacher apprentices’
Modeled after a similar effort in the state of Tennessee, the second part of Fuel OKC’s “two-pronged approach” to addressing the teacher shortage crisis involves directing paraprofessionals, or teacher aides, toward earning a degree in education so they can lead classrooms.
Tennessee helped create the National Center for Grow Your Own, which established the nation’s first “registered apprenticeship programs in K-12 teaching.” Bushey relied on that as a model for Fuel OKC’s “paraprofessional degree program for teacher apprentices.”
“Historically, people go into teaching by getting their bachelor’s degree,” Bushey said. “Whether we like it or not, people aren’t doing that anymore. Not enough people are getting a bachelor’s degree in education — deciding to become a teacher. So we could bemoan, ‘Why?’ I think there’s lots of reasons. Pay is obviously one of them. But I’m actually less concerned with that and more concerned with finding alternatives.”
Using an alternative online pathway degree program at Oklahoma Christian University, Fuel OKC committed to “helping remove financial barriers” for aides seeking to become teachers by offsetting up to $8,000 in annual tuition costs for a bachelor’s degree in interdisciplinary studies with an emphasis in education.
“Since launching in February 2025, the program has received 46 applications, with 14 paraprofessionals currently enrolled in coursework at Oklahoma Christian,” wrote Fuel OKC communications consultant Jana Steelman in the June 17 press release. “With five enrollment periods each year, the program is designed to provide flexibility for participants balancing work, school and family. It integrates on-the-job classroom experience with academic study and pairs students with mentors to support their growth.”
After originally applying for an office job in 2021, Daisy Juaquez was offered a library computer paraprofessional position within Santa Fe South, despite holding no more than a high school diploma. Unbeknownst to her at the time, the opportunity would spark Juaquez’s love for teaching and working with young students.
“I’m first-generation Mexican American, so working with kids that look like me and that have the same background was life changing, I think, because I never had anybody that looked like me in the classroom growing up,” Juaquez said. “And so whenever I would speak Spanish to the kids and their eyes would light up, I’m like, ‘Yep, this is where I need to be.'”
As a 28-year-old mother, Juaquez was pleased that her position as a paraprofessional allowed her to be available to raise her young son during holidays and long breaks from school, but the position did not provide her the job stability she was seeking.
Juaquez said she always wanted to go back to school, but she felt as though it was never the right time. Then she heard about Fuel OKC’s paraprofessional program during one of the district paraprofessional development meetings.
“The day they [announced] it, I knew I was going to do it, because I’ve always wanted my degree, but I was waiting for the right time — which, that’s never going to come,” Juaquez said. “This is just perfect for me. It’s going through my job. They’re going to help me pay for some of it. It’s seven weeks of classes. My son’s older now, he’s more independent — so I’m like, this is the time.”
Having started her courses in early March, Juaquez is completing her second seven-week course period while still working as a full-time paraprofessional at Santa Fe South. Although the classes are fast-paced, Juaquez said she does not feel overwhelmed balancing her paraprofessional work and her own course work.
OC’s online interdisciplinary program is particularly structured to accommodate “the highly motivated student with experience or current employment in education.” There are no requirements for those enrolled in the paraprofessional pipeline program to complete their degree within a certain timeframe, allowing flexibility for the teachers who are enrolled.
“Most of our paraprofessionals are single moms,” Bushey said. “I’m a dad. I don’t go home and do a lot of work when my kids are awake, because my kids get my attention. So the idea that we would expect paraprofessionals making $24,000 a year to get a bachelor’s degree while they’re working — and to be doing that work at home — is, I think, irresponsible. And so, as much as possible, we want to be providing the time during the day for this training to take place, so that the paraprofessionals can get certified and don’t take on that extra burden at their house.”
Eventually, Bushey hopes to implement more of an “apprenticeship model” into the current program, where paraprofessionals enrolled at OC could transfer some of the work they do in the classroom during their regular working hours and receive credit for that work or “training” toward their degree. For the time being, however, he is proud of what Fuel OKC has been able to accomplish so far.
“The paraprofessionals already in classrooms are passionate and committed to helping students succeed,” Bushey said. “This program creates a clear and affordable pathway for them to become certified teachers, lead their own classrooms and increase their earning potential. (…) This work is about building stronger schools — and that takes all of us. For many paraprofessionals, cost is the only thing standing between them and a teaching degree. Donor support makes this pathway possible and ensures more Oklahoma City students have qualified educators in their classroom.”
