Hello Jaguar Community -  Welcome back and Happy New Year! I hope you had an enjoyable and restful break with family and friends.  I was able to travel, relax and, thanks to the suggestions of Jeanie Bailey, our oustanding campus Librarian, revisit my beloved past-time of reading a variety of fiction and non-fiction.  Alas, with a new year comes resolutions.  Like many of you, I have made a number of personal and professional resolutions for 2009.  My chief professional resolution is achieving Texas Education Agency "Exemplary" status for our school.   Although it is definitely a challenge for a large high school to earn an exemplary rating, I believe it is entirely possible and, more importantly, within our reach.  Throughout the spring semester, then, I will occassionally share insights about the goal and how you can help us reach it. In the meantime, our immediate goal is helping your students to prepare for their fall semester final exams.  Many teachers, of course, have already provided students with review materials and I am sure the faculty will focus much of this week's attention on next week's final exams.  For your benefit, the schedule of those exams is included in the "Schedule of Events" below.  Please note that, as has been the case for a number of years, the final two days of fall semester exams (Thursday, January 15 and Friday, January 16) are early release days and classes will end at 1:30 PM those two days. For those of you with students who qualified for and submitted exam exemption forms by the December 19 deadline, we ask for your help in reminding your students they must maintain their current average, attendance and behavior status in order to keep the exemption(s).   Likewise, please remind your students that, even if they have exempted an exam, they must be present for the exam period and they will be required to make up the exam if they are absent for the exam period.  On a related note, we would like families to be aware that, for a number of reasons, final exams are not administered early.  If a student is absent for a final exam, they may make up the missed exam within the allowable time frame.   Finally, parents of freshmen, sophomores and juniors may remember that their students took the PSAT earlier in the school year.  The PSAT results are in and will be given to your students through their advisory this coming Friday, January 9.  Your students will also view an explanation of how to interpret the scores through our campus simulcast.  If it is possible, we will post the video explanation to our campus web page for parents to view.  During the third week of January, our counseling department will also host an evening informational session to teach parents how to interpret  their student's PSAT scores.  I will send more information about that event in a separate e-mail. Have a great week!  Kristopher Wickerham Principal Claudia Taylor "Lady Bird" Johnson High School