FLHS Parents Worry Teachers Won't Write College Rec Letters

Fair Lawn students headed back to school Tuesday, soggy from the September rain but eager to see familiar faces and catch up with classmates they had missed during the summer.

Fair Lawn teachers also returned to a situation they've come to know well Tuesday, but not one they're quite as excited about. For them, Tuesday marked the second consecutive school year that they've worked under an expired contract.

The teacher’s union and school board held negotiations over the summer, and if last month’s Board of Education meeting is any indication, both sides remain cordial and proceedings are moving forward.

What may be on hold, according to a rumor circulating among Fair Lawn High School seniors and their parents, is the practice of teachers writing college recommendation letters for students.

During the public comment portion of last month’s school board meeting, Patti Lakin, the mother of a FLHS senior, said she heard from her daughter and other FLHS students that in June, teachers had informed rising seniors that because of ongoing contract issues, they would no longer be providing the customary courtesy of writing them college recommendation letters.

“You and I both know what happens to incomplete college application packages,” Lakin said to the board. “Incomplete applications get put to the side. They don’t make it to rolling admission and they won’t make it to early action, and they may not make it to early decision.

“For many of the kids, the transcript and the test scores and the essay will be enough,” she continued. “But for some, and maybe just even one kid, that recommendation letter holds the final decision: accept or reject.”

Lakin, who said her daughter is an early action candidate and plans to have her applications out in October, proceeded to ask the board why this year’s senior class should be made to suffer because of a contract dispute between teachers and administrators.

“They didn’t ask to be this class, this year, this senior year,” she said. “But they are. And I really don’t think that their lasting memory of Fair Lawn High School should be, ‘Our teachers wouldn’t write our letters.’”

Superintendent Bruce Watson defended the district’s faculty and responded with disbelief that Fair Lawn  teachers would uniformly refuse to write recommendations for graduating seniors.

“I believe this is rumor,” he said. “I don’t believe that our teacher’s union and its membership is solidly behind that type of action.

“And if it is,” he continued, “then I’m going to be terribly shocked. But I don’t believe it. We’ve got quality people here.”

Watson, a former teacher, said that having been involved in contract disputes from that side of the table, he understood the teacher’s right to action. But taking it out on the kids, he said, was not something he nor the Fair Lawn faculty he knows, would ever resort to.

“Out of what I’ve seen, in all the years I’ve been here with this staff, that’s got to be the minority of people,” he said. “The majority of people, I can’t believe that they’re going to take it out with kids. That’s not what they’re in this calling for.”

Fair Lawn Education Association president Gene Kuffel said the teachers would be fulfilling their contractual obligations, but declined to specify whether that included writing college recommendations.

He stressed that teachers had always done volunteer work that went above and beyond their contractual obligations, including moderating clubs and activities, and providing students extra help sessions before school, during lunch and after school.

Kuffel said he couldn’t comment on how teachers at the high school would  respond when asked to write college recommendations, but said he had not instructed them to refrain from doing so.

“But I’m only one component,” he added. “I’m not at the high school.”

As a sixth grade teacher, Kuffel said he’s almost never asked to write recommendations, although he said he obliged recently when asked to do so for a student seeking entrance to a private school.