Sixty annoyed 11th-graders trudged through the rain to their Soho school yesterday in the middle of summer to retake a Regents exam because their original exam fell off a truck and disappeared.
“They put all this stress on us for no reason. It’s totally unfair,” said Phil Lopez, 17, of Harlem. “It kind of ruins the summer for me.”
The students, from Chelsea Career and Technical Education HS, were shocked to learn when the school year wound up in June that their copies of the English Regents had vanished en route to New Jersey where they were to be evaluated and they would have to do it all over again.
“My mom came into my room and she was on the verge of tears because she knew I did really well the first time,” said Abdul Alvarado, 17, of The Bronx.
The news meant they had to study all over again.
“It’s been crazy,” said Justin Ortiz, 16. “I’m just appalled. I told my mother; she’s appalled too. We couldn’t understand: How do you lose our Regents?”
Celina Rosas, 17, of Far Rockaway, Queens, said that besides studying, she took test-preparation classes that interfered with her summer job at a community center. As a result, she said she missed “hanging out with friends.”
“It’s summertime. No one wants to be in school taking tests,” she said.
The students need Regents exams results in order to graduate next June and to apply for college well before that. Teacher Jan Scott said 15 students who didn’t retake the exam yesterday will have to do it in January.
Scott recalled how she made a promise to her students last year — “that if this was the thing I was going to do, that I would make sure they pass the exam.”
“The day of that exam, when they came out that door, they were so excitied. They were like ‘Ms. Scott, you gave us harder exams. We really did well.’”
When she learned that the exams had been lost, “I was a little devastated.”
But she recognized “I had to put down by frustration and anger.”
“I was so proud for them today, because they did come through,” she said.