Staff shortage creates anxiety about AP tests

PHOTO: This year’s AP registration required students to sign up on both Total Registration and College Board.

By Max Davis-Housefield & Elliot DeJong,

BlueDevilHUB.com Staff–

The Davis High administration provided registration instructions for AP exams in early November, much later than usual. This created anxiety for students and teachers as they faced a looming deadline to register before a price increase.

The reason for the delay? Several staff members critical to the process are on leave. 

Nikki LaVergne is DHS’s testing coordinator, and is currently on leave. DJUSD’s director of personnel services, Derek Brothers, was able to confirm that she was not on campus at the beginning of the 2021-22 school year. 

Her duties fell to vice-principal Nina Nero and Principal Tom McHale. According to McHale, they were able “to offer and successfully conduct two PSAT exams … as well as two SAT exams” earlier this fall.

However, towards the end of October, Nero took a leave of absence. This created problems for the AP exam registration process. 

On Nov. 15, the price of AP exams was scheduled to jump to $99 from $139 per test—a $40 increase. With many students registering for multiple tests, the cost savings with the lower price can be significant. Students wanting to register at the lower price had to meet the deadline. However, registration instructions were not provided, and the registration website was down, until just a week before. 

Once the registration website was fixed on Nov. 7, McHale sent an email to parents explaining how to register. Students received instructions and a link to the registration portal the following day, giving families eight days to register at the lower price.

Effects on Students and Teachers

This complication made the already stressful process of registering for the exam even more stressful for some students. 

Junior Emily Xia is taking five AP classes this year: calculus, chemistry, physics, French, and U.S. history. 

Xia said she finished registering for the exam “much closer to the deadline than I would like.”

“I feel like the whole entire process was smooth and straightforward,” Xia said on Nov. 12. “It was just that we didn’t really get the information until a solid two, three days ago. (It) was a much shorter time span than what I’m used to.”

Xia struggled to decide which tests she wanted to take.. “I had to make a last minute decision to slap on English,” Xia said. 

“It was a little tricky (this year),” said AP Physics teacher Scott Richardson. “I tend to wait and get some input from administration …  to set up join codes”

After waiting for a while, Richardson “found out that behind-the-scenes they had some difficulty getting the registration process going.”

So he had to scramble to create the join codes and determine when students would be able to register. When they finally got the information, he still needed to explain the tests to his students in a now limited period of time. 

“There are really four exams that they could possibly choose. I needed to clarify to the students what exam does what, which one they’re prepared for, which ones I recommend.”

The late registration process also created challenges for administration that are still being resolved. “Not all of my AP students signed up for the exams that (are) available (to them),” Richardson said. 

The administration had to reach out to AP teachers, and  students not signed up, to confirm who was planning to take each test.

Filling Staff Leaves

Despite having an established protocol for filling staff leaves, Brothers said that in the case of the DHS testing administrator leave, the responsibility instead fell to the DHS administration “to help facilitate all the deadlines.”

Normally, once the district is informed of a staff leave, it tries to find substitutes from within the district to fill the positions on a temporary basis. “We kind of advertise or solicit qualified people,” Brothers said. “We would also be looking for interested parties who are interested in learning about the position, and trying to get them to a spot where they can help.”

Brothers said McHale is now performing the full duties of the testing coordinator in addition to his full-time duties as principal.

Instead of finding one semi-permanent replacement for Nero, the district has been cycling through substitute vice-principals who are serving for three days at a time. According to Brothers, these vice principals are not assisting in testing.

Helen Spangler, an English teacher at Emerson Junior High, filled in for Nero on Nov. 8-10 and will again be filling in on Tuesdays and Thursdays for the next couple of weeks. 

“I didn’t know exactly what I would be doing (when I started),” Spangler said. “Sometimes it’s calm and then sometimes we’re putting out fires.”

She has been taking training to get a leadership credential and is interested in pursuing an administrative position in the district, which was one of the reasons she was asked to fill in for Nero. 

Spangler says she wants students and teachers to know that she is there to support them. She has enjoyed the position and “see(ing) my former students and see(ing) that they’re happy and enjoying their time at Davis High.”

“It’s a sad thing that we don’t communicate as well as we need to,” Brothers said about the registration confusion. “We really try to make sure that all our decisions are student centered and to make sure that the students get the information in a timely manner. This was an issue we would definitely work to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”