To Whom it May Concern, As seniors and soon-to-be graduates of William Howard Taft High School, we appreciate the value of a good education and the importance of consistent attendance and punctuality. We recently caught wind of a new school policy obligating our attendance during CST testing, when, paradoxically, seniors are not to be tested. We hope, that in an adult and civil manner, we may change your mind through this petition. Though it is unclear at this point what the school faculty intends to do with the testless seniors, we are assuming that you plan to congregate all 600+ of us in the school gym. This will not work for multiple reasons: (1) noise levels and general misconduct will definitely be present, (2) several faculty members will have to chaperone instead of proctoring a class of CST takers, thereby wasting resources, (3) our already miniscule janitorial staff will have to clean an extra mess left behind by students who had no beneficial reason for attending school, and (4) students who plan on studying for finals and AP exams will have been deprived of 4 daylight hours, because evidently nobody can study in a raucous gymnasium. Even if seniors are not forced to meet in the gym, I can assure that there will be seniors out and about in the hallways, which is the exact opposite environment we must set for CST takers. If you were planning to use dean enforcement to counter these disturbances, that may also backfire in the event that a dean is needed if a student is caught cheating and must face disciplinary action, a far more important use of a dean than policing hallways. We hope that we provided sufficient and reasonable points to change your perspective on this new policy. On behalf of the senior class I thank you for your time and look forward to graduation and future prospects for all of us. Sincerely, Sareen Palassian