December is now here and it is a short "school" month. There is no school on Friday because it is a grade day for teachers. Parents will see the 12-week progress reports the week of December 9th-13th. Please look carefully at your son/daughters progress report because there are only 6 more weeks of classes before these grades become final. This time will go quickly with two weeks before the Holiday Break and then another three weeks when we return, to end the semester. Earning passing grades in all assigned classes is important in order to move forward and on time towards graduation. We want to make sure that all students graduate from high school and having passing grades at the semester is a critical junction for demonstrating progress towards that goal. Included in the progress report mailing will be the Banks High School State Report Card. The report card has very good information about the high school including test score and attendance data as well as historical data in both areas as well. It also has comparisons of results from Banks High School with other similar high schools. It is worth noting that some of the high schools in our comparison group are; Riverdale, Lake Oswego, Union and Sherwood. The high school staff have been spending late start times looking at refining grading practices to move towards a building policy for grading. We have been using the book "A Repair Kit For Grading" written by Ken O'Connor as our guide for this discussion.