Faced with a shortage of math and science teachers, some American school systems are recruiting instructors from developing countries.

“Their content knowledge was very high,” said Spencer Horn, science department director for Birmingham City Schools.

The Alabama district is hiring teachers from the Philippines. Many come with advanced degrees and qualifications that, according to Horn, did not exist among the pool of local applicants.

Other education officials are uncomfortable with the idea of “outsourcing” the teaching of American schoolchildren. Virginia Volker, a Birmingham school board member who voted against the plan, described it as “wacky.”

In neighboring Georgia, Gwinnett County Public Schools (the state’s largest district) has recruited teachers from overseas in the past. But district spokeswoman Sloan Roach said her school system has launched programs to not only recruit teachers, but create new ones — domestically.

The Teach Gwinnett program is designed to attract and train non-teaching professionals in desired fields (such as engineering) to become instructors, she said.