New Team Members
We have some new team members, so please join me in giving them a warm welcome!
Erik Ekstrom is joining us as our new music teacher. Erik is a former Kenwood student and is pictured above with his Dad, a former principal in this building. Erik taught music to K-12 students in Minnesota for the past ten years. Erik is super jazzed to start working here and he is anxious to meet everyone.
Cat Wright is joining the 2nd/3rd-grade team and she joins us from Terrebonne. Cat was fortunate to teach alongside some storyline trained teachers while teaching in Terrebonne and she taught in a montosori setting in Davis, CA prior to central Oregon experience. She is already dipping her toes into the planning and prep for the year with her grade level team and I am sure the rest of you will enjoy getting to know her when we get started.
Aimee Sacamano is a National Board Certified teacher with experience teaching 3rd and 4th grade. She taught in Vancouver, WA, and Mill Valley, CA and now she will be adding the state in between. Like Cat, she is already connecting with her grade level team and I look forward to integrating her with the rest of you.
Susie Wittwer is a familiar face joining us for the year as a 4th-grade teacher. Susie taught a 4/5 blend here at Highland before leaving for other experiences and she is excited to be teaching this level and at Highland again.
Cameron Glogau will be rejoining our team next year as well. He’s not pictured because you all know him already and if next year is anything like last year, I have no doubt we will see his face on multiple videos and photos in the near future.
2021-2022 Work Calendar for Certified Staff- click here.
2021-2022 Work Calendar for Classified Staff – click here.
More details on our startup week coming next week.
New ICCLs & Leadership
After having discussions with Elementary leadership and other elementary principals I am going to continue to move forward with combining our leadership and ICCL teams so that it is consistent with the practices of other school sites and so there is no duplication of work. This means the Leadership team as we have known it will no longer exist as a separate committee from the ICCL team. From the district, we are provided with funding for 2 ICCL positions but I am going to use discretionary dollars to expand that number to 4-5. We’ll still have other committees (i.e safety, EBISS, Storyline…) for people to be part of, but the ICCL team will be the team that works with me and district leadership to facilitate our work toward continuous school improvement, teacher effectiveness, culture and environment of our school, and increased student achievement. Last spring I asked anyone interested in being an ICCL to apply and at the time Jennifer Fetrow and Cameron Glogau were the only two who expressed interest. However, with this change I am thinking that others might now be interested in applying. Please know that this might require additional hours outside the contracted workday.
Here are links to the ICCL job description and recommendation form
o ICCL Confidential Recommendation
o All applicants must provide an essay via email to Candy Gelatt in the HR office. Each candidate will also ask a colleague to submit a Confidential Recommendation form directly to Candy in the HR office.
If you have any questions don’t hesitate to call or stop by my office.
K/1 Ipads, iPad Insurance and SeeSaw –
- We will be keeping iPads 1:1 for Kindergarten and 1st grade next year.
- Purchasing iPad insurance is not mandatory for a child to receive an iPad. However, if a family does not want to have to pay the high cost of iPad repair due to damage or loss, purchasing the Bend-La Pine Schools’ iPad insurance will be in their best interest. We will be getting a flyer out to schools to give to families about how they can go about paying for this. They can purchase insurance online starting today until the last Friday in September.
- We will continue our subscription to SeeSaw for the upcoming school year as well.
Masking – When you are on campus be sure to mask up. Outside it’s OK to take it off, but once you are in our buildings please make sure you are wearing your mask unless you are alone in your room.
Ice Cream Social – unfortunately we will not be able to hold our Ice Cream Social in the same manner as in the past, however we may be able to explore a creative, safe way to bring in our Kinder families and possibly our new families on campus to see rooms and meet teachers. More on this later. This is an evolving issue with our numbers now.
Classroom Set Up – your classrooms are about 90% (it’s more like 87.5 but I am rounding up) set up for you. I was able to get a few folks (Kyle, Zane and Preston) to help move furniture around so we were able to get the desks set up in a standard layout for each room. I am sure there will be quite a bit of fine-tuning or changes based on your preference as well as the need too make more space, but I hope this will make your start up a little easier. I have to say it’s really nice to see our classrooms looking more and more like they used to!
Access to School – Unfortunately the construction is still in high gear all around the school. Paving is happening on Nashville, which is great news, but the concrete subcontractors have hit some delays with COVID, so that is holding things up a bit. The current projection shows that we still have at least a couple weeks before the parking lot is accessible.
High Desert Museum – Teachers’ Night Out
My name is Lexi, I am an educator at the High Desert Museum. We are in the midst of planning our annual Teachers’ Night Out. We are hoping for an in-person event but are prepared for a virtual one. We have a date set for you all to add to your calendars, the event will be held on Thursday, October 7th.
We are so very excited to see you all and celebrate the hard work you do for our community!
Please reach out if you have any questions!
Lexi Morse| Museum Educator
541-382-4754 ext. 320
59800 S. Highway 97 | Bend, Oregon 97702
