Our school district is implementing a +/- grading system. In addition to funding cuts, these decisions most heavily impact--not the authorities who make these decisions, but our population of more than 15000 students.

An example is Interlake. Rather than IB program itself, the students have always been the pride of the Interlake school system. In a program already academically rigorous, already highly competitive, and characterized by the grueling work that students put into maintaining and earning their grades and studies, the implementation of a new grading system would only make it more difficult to reach a higher level of success. In a work environment where high schoolers often stay up past 12 in order to get proper homework and studies done, this added stress only propagates mental health issues in students more. Anxiety is very common in the district due to rigorous coursework and limited time for other aspects of life, and this situation would only make it worse. At other schools, the same story often applies, where students use up most of their after school time to do schoolwork, turning most of their life to schoolwork. This change in the grading system would force many of the BSD students to use much more time then they already use for homework, further isolating other important aspects of their life, like their social and mental health.

Teachers in the district are already known to be very difficult with grading, creating stress in high schoolers about classes and maintaining a 4.0 GPA. This new +/- system will exponentially increase class difficulty, especially if coursework and grade scales otherwise stay the same, where the top people get an average of 90-93 percent, which will no longer be a 4.0.

The entire district has been toxic with comparison of grades. Change should be championed by the students themselves in order to help themselves, not make their own struggles much harder. It is very important that the stress on students should be minimized, especially those trying to excel, so that they to can live healthy lives outside of school.

This was written by multiple Interlake High School students.