This summer, the Clark County School District filled 69 of its hundreds of teaching vacancies with foreign instructors. Administrators said an extreme shortage of qualified applicants intensified their annual hiring crisis and prompted them to recruit abroad.

These same administrators rejected applications from hundreds of local residents, among them educated professionals and scientists, retired military officers and former teachers with excellent subject knowledge and leadership skills. These Clark County taxpayers, committed to their communities and eager to help the fast-growing district in its time of need, were told they simply didn't have the necessary experience and training to lead a classroom. They were told they would need to enroll at a local education college if they expected to be successful teachers.

The foreign teachers were more qualified, concerned parents were assured, and would do a better job.

Not even two months into the new school year, it's apparent that these foreign teachers were not at all prepared for their new assignments. The school district is advertising internally for two "facilitators" to help the foreign teachers -- 49 Filipinos, 14 Spaniards and six Canadians -- develop instructional strategies and classroom management techniques.

"Any facilitator position is for the purpose of providing support, training and resources to the teachers of the district," said Karyn Wright, the school district's director of teacher development. In other words, to teach them how to do their jobs.

The district employs five facilitators to help teachers new to Clark County. Because the nation's fifth-largest public school system hires about 2,000 teachers every year, one facilitator is available for every 400 or so new teachers.

But these 69 foreign teachers need two facilitators all to themselves. The district wants applicants for these new positions to have at least five years of experience, so the salaries and benefits paid to them will cost at least $100,000 per year.

Clark County taxpayers should be furious. The education establishment will defend the bureaucratic barriers that keep qualified, motivated American citizens out of the teaching profession, yet will spend six figures to keep underprepared foreigners at the helm of our children's classrooms? Meanwhile, hundreds of local residents who were denied full-time teaching positions are working as long-term substitute teachers -- for significantly less pay, no stability and no benefits.

If the school district is willing to hire facilitators to tutor these foreigners on the basics of teaching, wouldn't it have been easier and cheaper to put qualified local citizens in these jobs and provide them with the same special assistance -- if it was needed at all?

The Clark County School District's experiment with foreign teachers is a practical and public relations failure that should not be repeated. Residents must implore their School Board trustees, state lawmakers and representatives on the State Board of Education to slash the red tape responsible for the valley's teacher "shortage." The education of area children depends on it.