The first semester is winding down as students take their final exams this week, starting yesterday. Exams continued through today and will end tomorrow. Christmas break will begin tomorrow and students will have an early release. 

“I’m very excited for the break because I won’t be so busy with homework and everything,” junior Ellie Eicher said. “My exams have gone well so far, so I’m happy with my results.”

This year, the exemptions were virtual. A list of students in each grade were posted in the attendance office hallway. The students can tell their teachers if they want to use an exemption for that class, and the teacher can search for students’ names on a shared Google doc that all teachers have access to. 

“[Interventionist Ashley] Race had the idea of sending lists to teachers and have them fill in their name for student exemptions this year,” assistant principal Paul Weinheimer said. “We thought this was a good idea because it was getting tougher to find tickets to give out that students would not try to duplicate or sell to friends.”

So far, there have not been any issues with the online exemptions. Once a student uses one, their teacher will mark the class it was used in by the students name in the master doc. Teachers can see once a student has used all of their exemptions. 

“I think this way has been much better because there is no doubt which students have or don’t have exemptions,” Weinheimer said. “It was also easy to send the list to teachers and to post the lists.  Students have been in class to use exemptions and teachers have communicated about students using exemptions.”

Tomorrow is the final day of testing and will end at 11:10 a.m. for students who have a ride or can drive. Lunch will be provided from 12:18-1:00 p.m. and the buses will run around 1:10 p.m. The second semester and end of Christmas break will start Jan. 3. 

“We have had a great year,” Weinheimer said. “We have witnessed our students’ grades and achievements soar.  We are finishing the year with our best attendance of the year, less clock hours than in the past, less students in DAEP, CTE program is setting awesome records every day and all of our extracurriculars have seen great success.  It has been a joy to see our students give back to our community also in many ways.  Our students have given great effort and have displayed awesome enthusiasm and school spirit.  Our teachers are working extremely well together and giving our students great effort every day.  We can’t have any success without them and they are amazing. We still have plenty of room for improvement and will continue to have high expectations for our students.  We want to thank everyone for making today…A great day to be a Badger.”