PATERSON - With three months left to go, a dozen PANTHER Academy seniors risk not graduating because they were incorrectly told as freshmen that they didn't need to take the biology courses.
Discovery of the gaffe blindsided the students, who must take a two-month biology crash course to graduate, and has prompted Superintendent Donnie W. Evans to call for a comprehensive evaluation of the district's guidance services.
Evans wrote in a memo to school board members that he has taken "appropriate personnel action" with the school's guidance staff and that he plans to take further action concerning the academy's principal and the district administrator who supervises guidance.
"Unfortunately, there was no follow-up by the school to enroll these students in the course until our newly appointed director of high schools (Alexandra Gina) discovered the error in early March,'' Evans wrote in an April 15 memo. Biology is a statewide graduation requirement.
"Obviously, somebody dropped the ball here and now these kids have to suffer for it,'' said school board member Manuel Martinez. "They have two months to cram in a year's worth of material.''
But the union leader who represents the academy's guidance counselor said she's being unfairly targeted for blame.
Peter Tirri, Paterson Education Association president, said the counselor never told the students they didn't have to take biology and that interim administrators have made recent changes that have undermined her ability to do her job, including moving her out of her office and into a hallway space set off by partitions
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