School district recruiters went south of the border this month to hire some of Mexico's top bilingual teachers to put in Utah classrooms.

Mark Peterson, spokesman for the State Office of Education, said the state signed a "memorandum of understanding" agreeing to help the Mexican teachers get visas to work in the United States. Mexican officials then pre-screened around 50 teachers that recruiters were able to pick from.

"We have a large and growing (English language learner) population in which Spanish is a large component," Peterson said. "Having a good set of bilingual teachers on hand is an enormous benefit to the public school system."

Human resource officials from Davis, Salt Lake, Granite and Tooele interviewed the teachers in Mexico earlier this month. They offered 12 teachers positions in dual language, English language learners, special education, math, science and critical needs areas where there are teacher shortages.

Peterson said the state is not paying for the new teachers' transportation or housing and they will be earning a regular salary. They will work on a year-to-year basis for up to three years at which point the visas expire. However, Peterson anticipates more teachers will follow.

Utah has also engaged in a similar recruiting program with both China and Spain.

"It establishes a rapport and could help with teacher shortages in future," said Jason Olsen, spokesman for Salt Lake City School District, which has a 53 percent minority population.

"It's not just about language and ESL needs, but it also helps reinforce the culture of many of the students in the district and puts more ethnic minorities in teaching positions, which is something we need — our teaching population needs to reflect our student population a little bit more," he said.

The program is part of an agreement between Mexican officials and Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. during his 2005 Mexico visit.

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E-mail: terickson@desnews.com