I am writing in response to the article “NY State Bar Association to Focus on Why Parolees End Up Back Behind Bars.” As a newly retired teacher with over 26 years of experience in the Kingston City School District, my last two years were spent teaching humanities in the HSE program offered to minors through the school district at the Ulster County Jail. My experiences there were perhaps the most rewarding of my career.

This June the district cut our hours there, as well as eliminating administration of the TASC [Test Assessing Secondary Completion] exam to our inmates in January. Though the district was the Ulster County TASC testing center until that time, it chose not to renew the site application. Ulster BOCES then applied and is administering the exam to test-takers on the “outside.” As of June, we were told no one from BOCES would be testing our inmates.