To The Editor:

This letter is written to address the two major concerns raised in last week’s letter to the editor [“Teachers Dropping After-School AP Review Sessions Should Not be a Bargaining Chip”]. Let us first say, we are grateful to the parents who submitted the letter. The members of PREA share the parents’ desires to keep the community informed regarding all aspects of the ongoing contract negotiations and to minimize the impact upon students in the absence of a contract.

The parents spell out two concerns: teachers may stop writing letters of recommendation and will not conduct after-school review sessions for AP exams in the spring. We can confidently assure parents that the writing of college recommendations has not and will not stop. These letters are essential to students’ college applications. The PREA has never suggested and high school teachers, coaches, and guidance counselors could never imagine refusing to write these letters no matter how bad the state of negotiations may be. We care deeply about the future of our students.

The second concern, the possible cessation of after-school AP course review sessions, is a somewhat different matter. There is, of course, one important similarity. Teachers spend a considerable number of hours of their own time writing the above-mentioned letters without compensation. This is also the case regarding the many hours teachers spend preparing for and conducting AP review sessions, which, however, are not conducted because the College Board deems them essential, or because they are part of the AP curriculum adopted by the PPS Board of Education, or because school administration requests them. The sessions are purely the initiative of the teachers who choose to offer them and often go completely unnoticed by anyone other than the students and their parents. Moreover, many teachers choose to offer sessions at night and on weekends to accommodate student schedules. As a result, teachers incur costs on top of the lack of compensation.

There is another distinction between the letters of recommendation and the review sessions. The reason AP students and parents were given months of notice of the possibility of no review sessions is to allow them to pursue alternatives, whether it be students working harder, forming study groups, and beginning their review earlier or seeking private tutoring. On the other hand, there is clearly no substitute for the teachers’ letters of recommendation — they are unquestionably essential.

The parents state in their letter, “… the excellent performance over the years by Princeton students on AP exams is another measure of our schools’ success.” We couldn’t agree more. And undoubtedly part of that excellent performance on the exams is due to these review sessions. The good news is that the sessions don’t take place until March; there is time to reach a contract and avoid their cancellation. If there is not a contract, however, that will mean that for seven or eight months teachers have been taking home lower pay than last year. The absence of review sessions will not be a bargaining chip; it will simply be the reality that teachers have financial limits too.

One final point of clarification, all AP teachers at Princeton High School are unified and did in fact sign the letter that was sent home. Unfortunately, there was a clerical error on our part and a name was inadvertently omitted from the list.

We continue to value the support we have received from the parents and the community and remain hopeful that negotiations can produce a fair contract in the near future.

Jeff Lucker, Tim Campbell

AP Teachers, Princeton High School