FLHS Guidance Counselor: 'Many Teachers are Writing Recommendations'

Many of the parents and senior students who packed into the auditorium at Fair Lawn High School Tuesday for College Application Night were hoping for a resolution to the issue that’s been a heated topic of conversation at school board meetings since the year began: college recommendation letters.

After an hour of thorough, guidance counselor-led discussion and question-and-answer about the subtle differences between college admissions policies, entrance essays, resume presentation and standardized test procedures, the burning issue finally came to a head.

“This is the elephant in the room,” said guidance counselor Dan Panessa, grasping a bulging stack of paper slips on which parents had been asked to write their questions for the counselors. “Letters of recommendation.”

Panessa said that in spite of rumors to the contrary, he knew many teachers who were writing recommendations, and that he was hopeful the issue would work itself out.

"You can tell me, ‘Absolutely, you’re crazy, that’s not happening,'" he said. "And I’m telling you, ‘You’re wrong.’"

Panessa said he couldn't address any teacher's motivation for choosing not to write recommendation letters, but reiterated that teachers have never been obligated to write letters of recommendation for students.

“Whether or not the particular teacher that your child asks says ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ is entirely up to them,” he said. “It has nothing to do with the counseling department, nothing to do with the administration, the superintendent of schools, the Board of Ed. No one.  The teacher makes that decision.”

If a student's preferred teacher is unwilling to write a recommendation letter, he or she will be able to obtain a letter of recommendation from a guidance counselor, Panessa said. Vice Principal Matthew Cahn also said he and Principal James Marcella would help in any way they could with recommendation letters.

Fair Lawn High School's standardized procedure for handling college recommendation letters is as follows: 

A student must begin by asking his or her teacher if they will write the letter of recommendation.

If the teacher agrees, the student must then obtain a gold data sheet from the guidance office.

The student must fill out the gold sheet with information the recommending teacher can use to form their letter, sign it and hand it back to the teacher who will write the letter.

This standardized process is carried out to ensure that students don’t ask a multitude of teachers to write them recommendation letters, choose the top two or three, and discard the rest, Panessa said.