The school system in coastal Baldwin County -- 60 miles by 25 miles of Alabama farmland framed on two sides by waterfront towns -- was short on teachers, especially in courses such as math and science.
So short, in fact, that district officials went around the world last year, with expenses paid by a teacher recruiting firm, and brought back Michel Olalo of Manila and 11 other Filipinos to teach along the shores of the Gulf Coast and Mobile Bay and in the communities in between.
That raised some eyebrows in Baldwin County, where nine out of 10 people are white, just one in 50 is foreign-born and, as the county's teacher recruiter Tom Sisk noted recently, "Many of our children will never travel outside the United States."
Yet school administrators throughout the U.S. are plucking from an abundance of skilled international teachers, a burgeoning import that critics call shortsighted but educators here and abroad say meets the needs of students and qualified candidates.
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