Moving Rooms – My 11th hour changes disrupted the flow of moving traffic and caused a few crossovers – sorry for that. Some of you may need to make some space for the incoming teacher so we can get these gears moving again.
Here’s the updated list of room assignments;
Room 1 – Jennifer (24/28)
Room 2 – Anna Park (23/23)
Room 3 – Amber Martinson (16/18)
Room 4 – Cami Green (16/18)
Room 5 – Ukiah Yeager-Woock (16/18)
Room 6 – Alicia Vickery ((16/17)
Room 7 – JJ Howard(21/21) – will move after we start CDL
Room 8 – Becky Hildebrand (23/24)
Room 9 – Cameron Glogau (19/19)
Room 10 – Michelle Watt (19/19)
Room 11 – Scott Clements & Storage (NA)
Room 12 – Deanna Chambers (19/19)
Room 13 – Marci Henry (22/19)* Moving to library for All In K-3
Room 14 – Storage & Pass Thru (NA)
Room 15 – Rob Pettis (NA)
Room 17 – Becky Eriksson (21/21)
Room 18 – Misha Therrian (23/23)
Stage – Marieka Greene (24/28)
Music Room – Marina Reisinger (24/25)
2nd grade iPads – Debbie is working on getting these ready, hopefully before Friday. Fingers crossed! Thank you, Debbie for making it happen.
Jon Craft just shared a document to go home with parents when they get their iPads. This gives families a quick snapshot of the essential apps and resources needed.
Class Lists – these are available to you in synergy. Teachers assignments will go live in ParentVUE any minute now.
Materials Distribution – latest document with our guidelines for distributing materials, including home visits.
My understanding is both 1st grade and 2/3 grades will be distributing materials on Friday 9/11. I am fairly certain you all told me times, but I need a reminder on times and locations around the school grounds.
Friday 9/11
11:00-1:00
Jennifer – Room 1 Window (on Newport)
1:00-3:00
Anna- Newport
JJ- Harmon
Cam-Nashville
Marina- parking lot
Learning Kits – ELA kits are in the hall just outside the office – please feel free to get these ready to go for your teams (if you have not already done so). Math kits are supposed to be here by the 21st.
One Teacher’s Trash is another Teacher’s Treasure – Tables are full of treasures – Anything left over after Friday 9/11 will be discarded. Please be sure to wash your hands often during this entire process.
From our Excellent District Nurse – Many thanks to Tami Pike and her nursing staff for creating a twenty minute Covid training video –click here to access the directions.We are requiring all staff to complete this training (along with the google acknowledgement form) prior to September 11th but encourage you to do it sooner if possible.
Startup Week(s) Plan;
Wednesday 9/9 (Day #191) – District Training Day
Training opportunities – below are the optional training opportunities on September 9th for teachers and educational assistants. These are available to EAs. This will not be your only opportunity for optional trainings. We will offer additional sessions later in the month. Sign up for these classes and future classes will be available on Performance Matters on Wednesday, September 2nd. All courses will be on Webex
Kindergarten Lexia 8:00-9:30
1-2 Lexia 9:45-11:00
3-5 Lexia 2:00-3:30
Lexia for Educational Assistants 8:00-9:30
Lexia for specialists 12:45-2:00
Seesaw for Beginners 8:00-9:30
What is new to Seesaw? 2:00-3:30
Effective Synchronized Math Lessons K-2 11:00-12:30
Effective Synchronized Math Lessons 3-5 11:00-12:30Screen Recording. 9:45-11:00Using Webex More Effectively 11:00-12:30
Google Classroom 3-5 12:45-2:00
and more to come….
The sign up in Performance Matters is open for the Optional Professional Learning Opportunities on September 9th.
Two Ways to Access Performance Matters:
Go to the calendar icon in the upper right corner. Select the 9th, and it will show all the classes available on that day.
Go to “My Courses” under search, type in “Optional.” Two courses will appear. Select the 9/9 one. Then to see all classes, select “View all sections” in lower right corner.
Phase One Moving Deadline – please try to have your first phase moves completed by the end of this day.
8:30-10:00 – Screen Casting Workshop presented by Christie Boen – please email me if you plan to attend.
RSVP for Attending: Amber, Debbie, Michelle, Marina, Heidi E, Cami, Ukiah, Alicia
10:30-11:30 – Google Classroom – Marina will provide a workshop for anyone needing some help with getting their google classroom. Please email me if you plan to attend.
Thank you, everyone for your hard work these past few days. A special thanks to Tim, Rob and Scott! We made some significant progress on creating more space in our limited storage areas and moving some furniture today thanks to their efforts.
Class Lists – your class lists are active in synergy now. Shawna and I decided not to go public with these yet, because it’s best to give you all a chance to see them first. We plan to post these to ParentVUE on Tuesday unless we hear about any issues from you. (1 day earlier than promised, I might add!!!)
Materials Distribution – latest document with our guidelines for distributing materials, including home visits.
Learning Kits – ELA kits have arrived and are in our hall. Math kits are coming by the 21st (I think?) maybe with markers, maybe not…(=
One Teacher’s Trash is another Teacher’s Treasure – Let’s do a supply swap! As you clean and pack up your room and you come across some materials that you don’t need or have a surplus (extra scissors, or extra pens, etc.) Anything that can still be used by another teacher or student please bring to the gym. I will place out a row of the foldable tables and you place your unwanted items there and shop for your own needs. If you see something you can use with your class then take it. We will leave these materials out for the next week and they are up for grabs. Anything left over after Friday 9/11 will be discarded. Please be sure to wash your hands often during this entire process.
WebEx Update – Try out the new WebEx features, including breakout rooms, at: bls-preview.webex.com Sign in to our TEST environment with your regular Bend-La pine credentials and you can test the all new WebEx. The features in TEST are scheduled to be available in the production environment on September 14th. Please keep in mind this is an active test/development environment and things could shift a little over time. Access to test will remain until the features go live in production.
Recording Lessons – During Comprehensive Distance Learning, some teachers may elect to record lessons. After consulting with legal counsel, student voice, student image, and student name are ALLOWED to be recorded and uploaded/shared within your Google classroom or Seesaw classroom. So you may, if you choose, record the first lesson launch you deliver live (in Webex), save that recording to your desktop then upload it to Google Classroom or Seesaw. Keep in mind that recordings on Webex can not be viewed for 24 hours.
Attendance (From Skip) – if you have questions about attendance please refer to the documents I had in last week’s blog. These are live documents so a new information arrives or changes it will be included. In nutshell, students will be automatically considered “present virtually” unless a teacher goes in and changes that. Again, refer to that document
From our Excellent District Nurse – Many thanks to Tami Pike and her nursing staff for creating a twenty minute Covid training video –click here to access the directions.We are requiring all staff to complete this training (along with the google acknowledgement form) prior to September 11th but encourage you to do it sooner if possible.
Startup Week(s) Plan;
Wednesday 9/9 (Day #191) – District Training Day
Training opportunities – below are the optional training opportunities on September 9th for teachers and educational assistants. These are available to EAs. This will not be your only opportunity for optional trainings. We will offer additional sessions later in the month. Sign up for these classes and future classes will be available on Performance Matters on Wednesday, September 2nd. All courses will be on Webex
Kindergarten Lexia 8:00-9:30
1-2 Lexia 9:45-11:00
3-5 Lexia 2:00-3:30
Lexia for Educational Assistants 8:00-9:30
Lexia for specialists 12:45-2:00
Seesaw for Beginners 8:00-9:30
What is new to Seesaw? 2:00-3:30
Effective Synchronized Math Lessons K-2 11:00-12:30
Effective Synchronized Math Lessons 3-5 11:00-12:30Screen Recording. 9:45-11:00Using Webex More Effectively 11:00-12:30
Google Classroom 3-5 12:45-2:00
and more to come….
The sign up in Performance Matters is open for the Optional Professional Learning Opportunities on September 9th.
Two Ways to Access Performance Matters:
Go to the calendar icon in the upper right corner. Select the 9th, and it will show all the classes available on that day.
Go to “My Courses” under search, type in “Optional.” Two courses will appear. Select the 9/9 one. Then to see all classes, select “View all sections” in lower right corner.
Phase One Moving Deadline – please try to have your first phase moves completed by the end of this day.
8:30-10:00 – Screen Casting Workshop presented by Christie Boen – please email me if you plan to attend.
RSVP for Attending: Michelle, Marina, Heidi E, Cami, Ukiah, Alicia…
10:30-11:30 – Google Classroom – Marina will provide a workshop for anyone needing some help with getting their google classroom. Please email me if you plan to attend.
20-21 Changes to the Instructional Technology Team – from Brenna Frost
I will be supporting Elk Meadow, Ensworth, Highland, Ponderosa, Silver Rail, and W.E. Miller.
John Craft and Dyan Sultzer will work with the remaining elementary schools
Scott McDonald and Christie Boen will be working with middle and high schools.
Below are a few announcements as everyone prepares for Comprehensive Distance Learning.
Seesaw for Schools This has been purchased for all K-2 teachers and their students. When schools complete class lists in Synergy, students’ names will show up in Seesaw. Teachers and students will access Seesaw through Clever this year. No need for badges/codes, etc. More details and support will be available soon.
Google Classroom 3-5 teachers, you can find helpful info on the BLS resource page here.
WebEx reminder There is a new address when using Webex. It is: bls.webex.com. The old address will stop working eventually.
Loom Video Recording If you plan to use Loom, you’ll need to use Chrome as your internet browser and you’ll need to add the Loom Chrome extension. The desktop version of Loom is no longer supported and won’t work on our systems due to security restrictions.
Please watch for more emails from me in the near future. Our team is compiling an extensive list of tutorials for you and your students. For now, you can find some tutorials on our district’s page, Tools for Comprehensive Distance Learning. (Please note: some videos still need to be updated/modified. For example, the “Creating a Seesaw Account” video is not current as of today. Our team is working to make these updates as soon as possible.)
Lastly, our team is here for you. We know there are many things you are juggling right now and there’s a lot of uncertainty. Please reach out if we can support you. We can connect via email, phone, Webex, or in-person with masks/appropriate distancing.
Looking forward to working with you,
Brenna Frost
Scaling up to provide Limited In-Person Instruction (LIPI) in your building
The district’s Return To School Core Team (Lora, Katie, Brad, board member Caroline Skidmore, Paul) made some decisions on an entry into LIPI.
We will start LIPI on September 28th
We will use a “phased” approach to determine when to scale up or scale back LIPI. The phases will be based on highest priority and highest needs and will be tied to local metrics.
—
Activities
When start
Metrics
Phase 1
Evaluations (SPED/ELL) and students with zero connectectivity
Sept. 28
Building level – No confirmed cases of COVID within 14 days
Phase 2
Above, plus add instructional supports for students based on need (primary historically underserved)
Oct. 5
Building level – No confirmed cases of COVID within 14 days AND county metrics are below 30 cases per 100,000
In order to be ready for evaluations under LIPI beginning September 28th, Sean is asking your school’s evaluation team (nurse, school psych, Speech-Language pathologist, and ELL/Title 3) to develop procedures for in-person evaluation. The evaluation team will use guidance aligned with ensuring section 1-3 of your school’s operational blueprint are met and will share the final proposal with your school safety team by September 23. As your school evaluation team is forming, please feel free to consult and/or participate as you deem necessary.
*may need to make a second move to alternate space for all-in.
Startup Week(s) Plan;
Wednesday 9/9 (Day #191) – District Training Day
Training opportunities – below are the optional training opportunities on September 9th for teachers and educational assistants. These are available to EAs. This will not be your only opportunity for optional trainings. We will offer additional sessions later in the month. Sign up for these classes and future classes will be available on Performance Matters on Wednesday, September 2nd. All courses will be on Webex
Kindergarten Lexia 8:00-9:30
1-2 Lexia 9:45-11:00
3-5 Lexia 2:00-3:30
Lexia for Educational Assistants 8:00-9:30
Lexia for specialists 12:45-2:00
Seesaw for Beginners 8:00-9:30
What is new to Seesaw? 2:00-3:30
Effective Synchronized Math Lessons K-2 11:00-12:30
Effective Synchronized Math Lessons 3-5 11:00-12:30Screen Recording. 9:45-11:00Using Webex More Effectively 11:00-12:30
Google Classroom 3-5 12:45-2:00
and more to come….
Thursday 9/10 (Day #192) – Teacher Work Day
Phase One Moving Deadline – please try to have your first phase moves completed by the end of this day.
8:30-10:00 – Screen Casting Workshop presented by Christie Boen – please email me if you plan to attend.
RSVP for Attending: Marina, Misha, Heidi E, Cami, Ukiah, Alicia, Anna…
10:30-11:30 – Google Classroom – Marina will provide a workshop for anyone needing some help with getting their google classroom. Please email me if you plan to attend.
BPR Child Care – Academic Support – Shelly and Danielle will be providing the 2 hours of academic support for these groups. I know this causes some frustration and even some confusion for a variety of reasons, so here is what I use to make myself feel better about it;
I trust Lora. She would not ask us to do this unless it was absolutely necessary.
BLP staff are being given priority – while we might not take full advantage of this, there are colleagues across the district who need it at their sites.
The intention is to provide this for Highland families who need it most.
This will improve our ability to keep more Highland kids engaged. Without this opportunity, some kids may be forced not to stick with us in CDL.
Some other info;
BP&R intends to structure this as quiet school-work environment for students.
They will be using some of our furniture, so I will be moving some of our unused tables/desks into the gym and cafeteria for them to use.
“At the end of the day, we can endure much more than we think we can.” – Frida Kahlo
Thank you for staying engaged today. I am incredibly grateful and honored to be tackling these challenges with you. Keep breathing, find your feet and leap. It’s going to be OK, no wait…it’s going to be better than OK. I know this.
My Apologies – I made a mistake in communication about the masks today. Please wear your masks at all times in the building. You are welcome to take your masks off when you are alone in a room.
Moving Rooms – Thanks for your patience and understanding on this issue – hang in there a little longer and I will provide your plan for this. I will focus on placements for nearly 100% tomorrow and then I can land on the final decisions on putting everyone in their new room.
Entering and Exiting the Building – Starting tomorrow please start the habit of using the checkin/checkout system when you arrive and leave. See video for further explanation.
Staffing Update – Are you ready for a couple more? Well ready or not here they come! Anna Park is moving to the 2/3 team to take over that vacancy left by Michele Cross. And our newest team member at the Kindergarten level will be Marci Henry. Marci is a parent of some former Highland students and she is currently teaching at Juniper.
Startup Week(s) Plan
These startup weeks are taking a little more shape (this is still subject to change);
2:00-2:45 Lexia Training – Heidi Evans and Me only
Thursday 9/3 (Day #187) – Grade Level Team Meetings in Gym
8:00-9:00 4th/5th Grade
9:30-10:30 2nd/3rd Grade
11:00-12:00 1st Grade
12:30-1:30 Kindergarten
2:00-3:00 Support Staff
Wednesday 9/9 (Day #191) – District Training Day
Training opportunities – below are the optional training opportunities on September 9th for teachers and educational assistants. These are available to EAs. This will not be your only opportunity for optional trainings. We will offer additional sessions later in the month. Sign up for these classes and future classes will be available on Performance Matters on Wednesday, September 2nd. All courses will be on Webex
Kindergarten Lexia 8:00-9:30
1-2 Lexia 9:45-11:00
3-5 Lexia 2:00-3:30
Lexia for Educational Assistants 8:00-9:30
Lexia for specialists 12:45-2:00
Seesaw for Beginners 8:00-9:30
What is new to Seesaw? 2:00-3:30
Effective Synchronized Math Lessons K-2 11:00-12:30
Effective Synchronized Math Lessons 3-5 11:00-12:30Screen Recording. 9:45-11:00Using Webex More Effectively 11:00-12:30
Google Classroom 3-5 12:45-2:00
and more to come….
Thursday 9/10 (Day #192) – Teacher Work Day
8:30-10:00 – Screen Casting Workshop presented by Christie Boen – please email me if you plan to attend.
Friday 9/11(Day #193) – Teacher Work Day
Tech workshops TBD
BPR Child Care – Academic Support – Unfortunately we are not going to be able to utlize people from transportation so we will be giving up some EA time to support these two groups.
Feeling Ill??? If a staff member feels ill after entering a school site, they are to isolate themselves within the building and immediately call their supervisor (that’s me). The supervisor will text Tami Pike, Health Services Supervisor, at 541-350-8387 with the following information: This is [insert your name] and I have a staff member feeling ill. Please call me. The staff member can be reached at [insert phone number]. Tami will call you and advise you and the staff member’s next steps.
On Thursday she started the day with flat tire. After getting that fixed she had to shuttle her kids to some different appointments all across town. Then she made time to pick up the donated paperbags at Safeway. When loading the bags they all spilled on the ground. After she gathered them up off the hot pavement she locked them in the trunk of her car…with her car keys…and her cell phone. Thankfully Heidi Evans rescued her with her phone and gave AAA a call. Guess what?!?! AAA does not know a locksmith in Bend, but it was long after Heidi had gone for them to call the safeway store and notify her they were not coming so Shawna was stuck again. Fortunately a nice Safeway employee offered to let her phone the Bend Lock and Safe. She made it back and all was well, she was still smiling. Anyway, she had one of those terrible-no-good days so please send her a virtual hug right this moment! Thank you, Shawna!
Moving Rooms – I emailed you as teams to share a narrowed down list of your potential new rooms. There are a lot “if-thens” for me to work through based on your responses in the next few days, but I think we can get a clear idea in the near future. Thanks for hanging in there.
Cleaning Supply Stations -Please watch this quick video (and try not to laugh at me).
Staff WebEx Protocols – How to avoid being a bad SNL skit. (=
General Guidelines
Engage and be present with your meeting. Please no multitasking. (Walking around, driving, doing yard work, etc. are strongly discouraged during any webex meetings. If you cannot fully participate in the meeting, then please do not join.)
Side conversations. I’ve listen to a number of you express frustration when your students use the private chat function to do this, so please practice what you preach.
Headphones – make a habit of using headphones – the sound is much better and this reduces feedback and cutting out.
Important to know:
Sound mute = this the speaker key on your keyboard with a little speaker symbol next to the volume down key.
Mic mute = this is a button on your screen that shows a little microphone with a line through it. Red = muted
Video Mute = this is a button on your screen (next to the mic mute) that shows a camera with a line through it. Red = muted
Space bar – while muted you can hold down the space bar to ask a question or provide input. When you release the space bar it will automatically return to mute. This is great for small and large meetings.
Hybrid Meetings (aka How to meet when some people are in a room together and some are working remotely)
The new world of online and hybrid meetings will be the norm for a while. This protocol is for times when meetings are mixed between in person and on WebEx. This protocol is created because it can be difficult to hear, speak, and know who is in the meeting.
All meeting members (both in-person and distance) log into WebEx
People in the room should enter the meeting with your microphone on mute. If you do not mute, there will be feedback.
All meeting members should turn on your video. It is important for engagement for other members of the team to be able to see you and to see each other’s emotions and reactions.
All meeting members turn your computer speakers to mute (key on top right of your keypad).
Assign a Bridge Monitor role. This person in the physical meeting will be sure to monitor the questions and comments of those attending remotely who can get forgotten about easily by the in-person team.
Raise hand if you wish to join the conversation
When you are speaking, hold down the space bar
If you need to step away to answer a phone call or take care of other personal needs, please turn off your camera and stay muted. When you return, please turn your camera back on.
Startup Week Plan
For your first day back on Tuesday please restrict your movement around the building to your assigned specific areas. Room 1 group will need to stay in front of the main building entering and exiting from the front door. Library group should enter and exit from room 14 door and stay in library area. Music room group will need to enter and exit from west door and remain in the music room, gym area.
After Tuesday please plan on using our new QR code CheckIn/CheckOut system. Each day you will need to have your smartphone ready when you enter and exit the building. Here’s another fabulous video for further explanation.
I will be providing more information on our staff cohorts and how we will track all this.
These startup weeks are taking a little more shape (this is still subject to change);
Tuesday 9/1 (Day #185) – WebEx Hybrid in Building
Wear your mask.
Bring your laptop and/or iPad fully charged.
Bring headphones.
You may want a notebook and pen of your own.
Dress comfortably.
Bring an extra dose of patience as we work through this meeting style.
8:00-12:00
8:00-9:45 Our Moral Imperative
10:00-12:00 Standards of Practice
Room 1
Library
Music Room
Alicia Vickery
Anna Park
Marina Reisinger
Amber Martinson
Deanna Chambers
Marieka Greene
Cami Green
Michelle Watt
Michele Cross
Ukiah Yeager-Woock
Becky Eriksson
Misha Therrian
Rob Pettis
Becky Hildebrand
JJ Howard
Barb Tennis
Jennifer Fetrow
Danielle Donnell
Heidi Evans
Jay Carlton
Scott Clements
Shawna Junker
Shelly Hill
Heidi Thomas
Megan Truelson
Asha Dicharry
Nicole Kalberg
Debbie Rychard
Me
New Person
12:00-1:00 Lunch on your own – Sorry but providing food for these occasions is far more challenging and expensive right now. There will be some individually wrapped snack food. You may want to bring your water bottle.
1:00-3:00 – Team follow up – this time is intended for more follow up with the SOP from the morning, however you can guide this work on your own.
2:00-2:45 Lexia Training – Heidi Evans and Me only
Thursday 9/3 (Day #187) – Grade Level Team Meetings in Gym
8:00-9:00 4th/5th Grade
9:30-10:30 2nd/3rd Grade
11:00-12:00 1st Grade
12:30-1:30 Kindergarten
2:00-3:00 Support Staff
Wednesday 9/9 (Day #191) – District Training Day
Training opportunities – below are the optional training opportunities on September 9th for teachers and educational assistants. These are available to EAs. This will not be your only opportunity for optional trainings. We will offer additional sessions later in the month. Sign up for these classes and future classes will be available on Performance Matters on Wednesday, September 2nd. All courses will be on Webex
Kindergarten Lexia 8:00-9:30
1-2 Lexia 9:45-11:00
3-5 Lexia 2:00-3:30
Lexia for Educational Assistants 8:00-9:30
Lexia for specialists 12:45-2:00
Seesaw for Beginners 8:00-9:30
What is new to Seesaw? 2:00-3:30
Effective Synchronized Math Lessons K-2 11:00-12:30
Effective Synchronized Math Lessons 3-5 11:00-12:30Screen Recording. 9:45-11:00Using Webex More Effectively 11:00-12:30
Google Classroom 3-5 12:45-2:00
and more to come….
Thursday 9/10 (Day #192) – Teacher Work Day
Tech workshops TBD – I hope to have a few options for some in-house learning -how to set up google classroom, seesaw and also some screencasting practice.
Here to serve – Here is a list of who to contact for elementary support.
John Craft- Instructional Technology
Brenna Frost- Instructional Technology
Dyan Sultzer- Instructional Technology
Lindsley Gehrig- Literacy Anna Schmitt- Literacy
Cate Denson Hill- English Language Development
Kerry Morton- Mathematics
Michele Oakes-Mentor Program and National Board Certification
Carrie Kennedy- Mentor
BPR Child Care – Academic Support I am working on a solution to the academic support for these groups that will help keep all our staff free to support CDL. Keep your fingers crossed and wish me luck.
Staffing Update
Our newest team member is in the pipeline for HR so I expect to make an introduction next week.
Congratulations to Anna Park who is one of our newest ICCLs
Feeling Ill??? If a staff member feels ill after entering a school site, they are to isolate themselves within the building and immediately call their supervisor (that’s me). The supervisor will text Tami Pike, Health Services Supervisor, at 541-350-8387 with the following information: This is [insert your name] and I have a staff member feeling ill. Please call me. The staff member can be reached at [insert phone number]. Tami will call you and advise you and the staff member’s next steps.
Building Relationships in an Online World
In this article, teacher/author Dave Stuart Jr. says a big challenge this fall will be building relationships with students who haven’t been met in person. “Before the hyperventilation kicks in,” he says, “let’s center on a few grounding principles:”
• Do the things you always do to build relationships at the beginning of the school year. Memorize all students’ names within a week; create a brief “moment of genuine connection” with each and every student within the first week (by office hours, videos, or phone calls) and systematically track them; survey students on their interests outside of school and the kinds of people they want to become; project a warm, authoritative, trustworthy presence; and start a regular routine of 3-5 positive parent phone calls a week.
• Relationships are fun and affirming and surprising and beautiful. The bonds teachers create in the opening weeks of school “will stoke the fires that keep us going,” says Stuart, and “will be helpful as we help our students stoke the fires that keep them going.”
• Relationships can be nurtured online. The work will be different remotely, and a little harder, but it’s not impossible, says Stuart. The key is to “remotify” what works in person and then make sure you ask for needed technology and pedagogical support with specific questions in mind. “This is a way of training yourself to become a pro in an area of teaching that you’re currently a novice at.”
• Relationships are about motivation, engagement, and productivity. Motivation is turbocharged by positive relationships; engagement can mean students getting “lost in the joy or thrill or peace or fulfillment of learning,” says Stuart. And the end product is academic and character mastery.
• Do it right. Stuart shares several ideas from The Distance Learning Playbook by John Hattie, Doug Fisher, and Nancy Frey:
– Dress and groom professionally.
– Project an optimistic demeanor about your students and about you.
– Weave what you’ve learned about kids into your lessons.
– Begin lessons with a positive affirmation like a favorite quote, a silly joke, or a short video.
– Ask questions that draw on students’ thinking (versus leading questions).
Schedule for Decisions on Returning to School Steps (comprehensive distance learning, balanced/hybrid, “all in”)
Although we must always leave room for flexibility and changes due to the rapidly changing nature of our understanding of this virus and its impact on schools, below is the chart we’ve created for district decisions:
As of Tuesday morning, most every elementary school site was directed to provide space for child care during the school day. (As of this morning, BP&R announced this to the community.) Similar to the after-school program, our district will be partnering with BP&R to provide limited child care. We will provide space for two groups of 20 students (max). The first space will be our cafeteria. The second will be the gym. There will be an entirely new set of guidelines and expectations provided for the BP&R staff to follow to ensure the program can run without interfering with our school day as well as stay within the state guidelines for operating. We were also directed to provide “academic support” staff during the CDL time frames for these groups. This support can come from teachers, EAs, whomever we can spare. Because of this need, I will be restarting the Secretary hiring process to bring another staff member on board to be available for some of this need. I am also hoping I might be able to convince you to use this as an opportunity to connect with some of our students in person on a semi-frequent rotational basis. We can talk more about how to accomplish this, but I had hoped and tried to make sure you heard this from me first, but the speed of information is outpacing me frequently these days. I am sorry for that. (If you are questioning why we can bring students in the building for an outside agency for childcare but cannot bring them in to provide our academics you are not alone….just smile and wave, smile and wave.)
Startup Week Plan
These startup weeks are taking a little more shape (this is still subject to change);
Tuesday 9/1 (Day #185) – WebEx Hybrid in Building
8:00-12:00 – I have a more detailed agenda for the day in the works. I will try not to dominate all your time but I do believe this is important work to do on the first day.
Room 1
Library
Music Room
Alicia Vickery
Anna Park
Marina Reisinger
Amber Martinson
Deanna Chambers
Marieka Greene
Cami Green
Michelle Watt
Michele Cross
Ukiah Yeager-Woock
Becky Eriksson
Misha Therrian
Rob Pettis
Becky Hildebrand
JJ Howard
Barb Tennis
Jennifer Fetrow
Danielle Donnell
Heidi Evans
Jay Carlton
Scott Clements
Shawna Junker
Shelly Hill
Heidi Thomas
Megan Truelson*
Asha Dicharry*
Nicole Kalberg
Debbie Rychard
*Depending upon availability with other shared sites.
12:00-1:00 Lunch on your own – Sorry but providing food for these occasions is far more challenging and expensive right now. We will work on providing some individually wrapped snacks to be available in each room.
1:00-3:00 – Team follow up – this time is intended for more follow up with the SOP from the morning, however you can guide this work on your own.
2:00-2:45 Lexia Training – Heidi Evans and Me only
Thursday 9/3 (Day #187) – Grade Level Team Meetings in Gym
8:00-9:00 4th/5th Grade
9:30-10:30 2nd/3rd Grade
11:00-12:00 1st Grade
12:30-1:30 Kindergarten
2:00-3:00 Support Staff
Wednesday 9/9 (Day #191) – District Training Day
Thursday 9/10 (Day #192) – Teacher Work Day
Friday 9/11(Day #193) – Teacher Work Day
BLPO Enrollment
Over 373 respondents and we still have 92% of our families choosing to stick with CDL .
CDL Standards of Practice (SOP) & Schedules **additional views of schedules
Start with the most important Standard of Practice is the second one which is “Take Care of Yourself”. Start with this standard and revisit it often. Do not let these be overwhelming, you are already doing more of this than you already know.
Here you will find some more details specific to to your grade span. Student Sample Schedules and Teacher Sample Schedules are also provided. These are also linked within the Instructional Logistics SOP
If you did not get a chance to see one of the WebEx sessions by Skip and Julie here is the slide set.
Staffing Update
As mentioned above, I will start the secretary hiring process back up. I will figure out some interview dates soon, but please let me know if you would be interested in serving on this interview team.
Now for the big news! As of Tuesday morning I was directed to hire a new temporary teacher for the 2/3 level to mitigate our numbers and allow for us to fit in our square footage for All-In K-3 scenario. Fortunately I had already been given a heads up about this possibility earlier in the summer so I shared this with our interview team last week and asked them to interview with this additional lens so we would look at all our candidates as potentials for this team. We had a really strong pool and I am hoping to get HR approval tomorrow to make an offer to one of these candidates. Since this is a temporary position for a year, we will be creating a single 2nd grade class for this new person. This brings all our class sizes in K-3 down to 22ish and allows for us to fit in our building when the time comes, which brings me to another difficult topic (see building stuff below).
Building Stuff
For this next paragraph, I will simply start with “I am sorry.” Because we now need to have a plan for All In K-3, there is a strong chance that many of you will need to change rooms before students come back to the building. Before we get too anxious about this and before we start our musical chairs with room assignments, I will take another few days to solidify the enrollment numbers and then make determinations of which classes must move in order to make this work. For now, please know that it’s very possible you will need to move rooms and somebody will need to move into yours for the year. This will be a temporary move for the year and we can all expect to return to our original rooms for the 2021-2022 school year unless COVID metrics are dictating something else. While some of you will be anxious to make these moves sooner than later, it’s important to remember that we still have at least 6 weeks prior to students returning to the classroom in a hybrid model.
To complicate things a little more, summer maintenance and cleaning did not go as originally planned but please know there is a plan to complete our building (both Highland and Westside Village are behind schedule, so it’s not just us.) The grinding of the concrete floors has created quite a bit of dust in the building but the floor downstairs is just about finished. After the 8th, Walter Norris will be able to employ some of our bus drivers to do some major dusting and the painting in classrooms that was promised.
They will also be removing the tile downstairs outside room 18 because it’s believed this is causing the moisture to climb back up the walls and cause that plaster to constantly fall out. The hope is this will be a more permanent fix to that revolving problem but it’s going to cause some more messiness in the meantime.
Schedule for Decisions on Returning to School Steps (comprehensive distance learning, balanced/hybrid, “all in”)
Although we must always leave room for flexibility and changes due to the rapidly changing nature of our understanding of this virus and its impact on schools, below is the chart we’ve created for district decisions:
Nicole Rigleman from Portland State University shared this course information/flyer with me. Since PSU will be online for fall and they are uncertain about winter and spring, her plan is to offer the MIL courses online all year in a combination of synchronous and asynchronous format. This is wonderful for us, since the Mathematics Instructional Leader program has been primarily available only in person in the valley making it difficult for us to participate. You would be able to use district tuition reimbursement dollars.
Best regards,
Kerry
Kerry Morton
Learning Kits
Math
Based on a consensus of feedback it now sounds like you would rather go with Bridges kits rather than make our own EDM kits. I have the request in, however I cannot make any promises at this time. I will let you know as soon as I hear back.
These startup weeks are taking a little more shape (this is still subject to change);
Tuesday 9/1 (Day #185) – WebEx Hybrid in Building
8:00-12:00 – Standards of Practice – Ideally we will do this with your teams in different rooms, participating as whole group Webex first, then breaking out for smaller group work with your teams.
1:00-3:00 – Team follow up – this time is intended for more follow up with the SOP from the morning, however you can guide this work on your own.
Thursday 9/3 (Day #187) – Grade Level Team Meetings in Gym
8:00-9:00 4th/5th Grade
9:30-10:30 2nd/3rd Grade
11:00-12:00 1st Grade
12:30-1:30 Kindergarten
Wednesday 9/9 (Day #191) – District Training Day
Thursday 9/10 (Day #192) – Teacher Work Day
Friday 9/11(Day #193) – Teacher Work Day
BLPO Enrollment
Over 342 respondents and we still have about 92% of our families choosing to stick with CDL and only a handful choosing BLPO and even fewer choosing other options. Kudos to Danielle, Barb and Shawna for calling people today to get these numbers squared away!
A lot of questions keep circling around switching back and forth between BLPO and CDL and unfortunately the answer has been a moving target – here is the latest stance and rationale: Switching Back and Forth This stance has changed a few times in the past couple weeks, but this is where it is landing for now.
CDL Standards of Practice (SOP) & Schedules
Start with the most important Standard of Practice is the second one which is “Take Care of Yourself”. Start with this standard and revisit it often. Do not let these be overwhelming, you are already doing more of this than you already know.
Here you will find some more details specific to to your grade span. Student Sample Schedules and Teacher Sample Schedules are also provided. These are also linked within the Instructional Logistics SOP
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday August 24-26 from 3-4 pm
SOP Info WebEX
The link below will take you to a WebEX put on by Skip and Julie today at 3:00 and tomorrow at 3:00. This is a great overview of the SOP. Try to make the time to watch one of these. https://bls.webex.com/meet/skip.offenhauser
Please join me in welcoming our newest team member, Michelle Watt! Many of you already know Michelle as she has two daughters, Maybel and Caralyne here at Highland. Michelle has been teaching Kindergarten at Silver Rail for the past year, she taught Pine Ridge and she was also the part-owner/lead teacher for Desert Blossom Preschool.
Unfortunately I have to share that Susan McClean will not be returning this fall. As many of you already know she has two parents with whom she interacts with often who are at risk, so she has decided that it’s best for their health not to work.
Schedule for Decisions on Returning to School Steps (comprehensive distance learning, balanced/hybrid, “all in”)
Although we must always leave room for flexibility and changes due to the rapidly changing nature of our understanding of this virus and its impact on schools, below is the chart we’ve created for district decisions:
I am deflecting a lot of questions regarding Hybrid at the moment so I can stay focussed on the CDL needs, but I just want you to know just about every decision and action is made with one eye on the Hybrid situation in the future. I just want to avoid talking too much about the hybrid situation details and all the “what-ifs” because lots of details will likely change between now and that time. Please just know that even though I am not sharing much about it, it is taking up a sizable chunk of my brain at any given moment of the day.
School Supplies/Classroom Funds/PTO budget
Please let me know ASAP if you would rather simply use the district kits – it appears they might meet our needs. See email.
Skip sent me a message to let me know that they will not be providing the district math kits for us since they are materials are associated with the Bridges program. They estimate the cost per student for these kits is approximately $5 per student, so they will put this into our school budget. We’ll still move forward with the $20 per student plan for any supplies we send home, but this is a nice safety net added to our budget to cover supply expenses as we move into the year.
Below are links to lists of the types of items they are purchasing at each grade level for a basis of comparison. I will leave it to you and your teams to decide what we need to send home.
I need to change the plan for this week as we will need to take some time to roll out the Standards of Practice. These are pretty robust documents that will require some time for us to process in our teams. We have a few suggested protocols for sharing these out but I will be asking the ICCLs to work with me next week to determine how to best approach this for our staff. I am assuming you want to dig into these sooner rather than later, so let’s plan on taking half the day of September 1st to start that process.
BLPO Enrollment
So far with nearly 260 respondents, we have over 90% of our families choosing to stick with CDL and only a handful choosing BLPO and even fewer choosing other options. We will start calling any non-responders on Monday to get a final answer.
CDL Standards of Practice & Schedules
This message below from Skip is for STAFF ONLY, please do not share beyond our own team.
Teachers –
As we move forward with comprehensive distance learning this year it is important that we listen to our stakeholders and community members and consider the feedback from them when planning for this Fall. We consider our teachers one of our most important stakeholders and we’ve been listening. We respect and honor all of your hardwork and thought as we work up to best practices virtually. The following information and documents will provide you with much needed information regarding logistics of the upcoming school year.
One overarching theme from the feedback was the need for consistent standards of practice (schedules, curriculum, instruction) across buildings and classrooms. When the decision was made to move to CDL, a team of teachers, coaches and administrators began immediately working on schedules, strategies for engaging families, and instructional practices that would help us meet the needs of students and families in a distance learning model and also meet the Oregon Department of Education Guidelines. Scaled down versions of these standards of practice will be communicated to our families next week to assist them with their decision making for the upcoming year. Just like you, our families want to know what the year will look like so they can plan how to best support their child in CDL.
We understand that receiving these documents via email might create more questions for you and that the information might be overwhelming. Our intention is to get this information to you sooner rather than later. Building principals will be dedicating time during inservice week to review and discuss the standards of practice and the schedules in more detail. The teacher-facilitated blocks on the master schedule are intended to create consistency. The more detailed schedules for K-1, 2-3 and 4-5 are meant to provide more details about what the day looks like for your grade band. Please know that within the schedules there is flexibility for meeting the needs of your students.
We want to support you and be available to answer any questions you might have. Prior to inservice week the TLC department will be hosting virtual question and answer sessions on the standards of practice and daily schedules. Please join us at one of the following times next week to engage in an overview of the process and explanation of the key elements of the standards.
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday August 24-26 from 3-4 pm
Take a few minutes to review our district’s Remote Learning Tools web page. This page likely looks familiar to you – it was in existence last spring – and continues to be updated.
k-2 iPads
Just so everyone knows, we are looking at making the k-2 ipads very easy to use and that means having very few apps. We want to start off small and build from there if needed. So please let your teachers know that if they are planning on using different apps with their kids they should re-think this. Currently we are looking at: WebEx, Sora, SeeSaw, and Clever to access Lexia and Dreambox. Maybe one or two more but possibly not.
Staffing Update
I want to send a huge thank you to our interview committee for their hard work yesterday. I think we all agree that our interviews were incredibly successful and we look forward to introducing a new member to our team very soon.
Schedule for Decisions on Returning to School Steps (comprehensive distance learning, balanced/hybrid, “all in”)
Although we must always leave room for flexibility and changes due to the rapidly changing nature of our understanding of this virus and its impact on schools, below is the chart we’ve created for district decisions:
PTO is not going to conduct a Giving Campaign this year or at least not while we are in CDL, however they are considering a sort of “passive ask” along with a way to give toward supporting families in need (FAN) during CDL and Hybrid Models. Families can still donate the suggested $30 for school supplies via the PTO website*, however without the Giving Campaign nor our Ice Cream Social, we should not expect much for this particular fund. As I shared with you in the spring, there is a balance of about $19,000 left in the budget. As we start the year we are not going to ask the PTO to release anything from their current balance of $19,000 to the school/teachers.
*As a school, we will not be asking money from parents for any supplies or any other purposes. The PTO website will have this link and information, but we will not be communicating this with parents via any school communication. This is a district-wide directive.
We will start by using the school funds (and your remaining class room fund balances from last year) to purchase school supplies for students. We got some great news that the district will be infusing some funds into our school accounts to address the need for individual school supply kits. This increase is $10 per student. Using this increase we will start with a $20 per student amount that each teacher will receive.
Work with your teams to establish school supply kits that will need to go home and also be thinking about the school supplies that need to be here at school for when we move to hybrid. I believe there is already some work being done on this with our district teams, but you will probably want to take some time to figure out what will best serve our needs.
As we move into the school year and learn more about our needs we can generate requests to the PTO to utilize the 19,000. Ideally we would identify some different and unique experiences, events, resources for the PTO to fund since these are the items that tend to generate more enthusiasm for the school and the PTO, however if we are in a place where we simply need their support to fund more classroom supplies or replenish, then it serves as safety net. Also, we will likely see the classroom fund line item grow over time, so I would hope there will some more funds available in that pot as well.
The bottom line(s);
You can still plan on ordering supplies.
You and your team need to establish what goes home and what will be needed when we return. We may also get some details from the district on these kits or lists.
You will receive funding, however this funding is initially coming from our school budget rather than the PTO budget.
Without considering your carry-over balance you can count on spending approximately $20 per student in your classrooms.
You might want to talk with your team about pooling your carry-over from last year to share the costs across the grade level.
All orders will go through Shawna so we can work on bulk ordering. Do not go buy on your own.
In the near future our PTO Board is ready to fund special requests, needs and/or items that might come up with that $19,000, however we all recognize that we may not know what those things might be right now.
BrainPop
BrainPOP will not be continued by the District as it is a 55,000 cost to the district and they have some redundant apps already purchased (Newsela, Discovery, etc.). If we want to continue it, then cost falls on us. It’s a little under $2000 for the entire school. We saw quite a bit of use during the spring distance learning and with K-1 receiving iPads, I could see this resource getting used more and more use of this program in the coming year. I am curious to hear(read) your thoughts on using it and whether we should buy the subscription for another year and here are the options;
Ask PTO to fund it as a request from the whole school.
Ask PTO to share the cost with the school budget.
Cover the cost from the school budget (This is doable, however it’s not a typical for me to spend this kind of chuck of money so early in the year so there is a risk it could impact us later in the year.)
Don’t buy it, we can use the district’s alternative apps in it’s place.
Startup Week Plan
As I mentioned earlier, I do not plan on taking too much of your time during our startup week (Sept. 1st). You all have a lot to do but I do want to balance some time to connect and see each other. Sorry, no Art with Alma this year. )=
You should plan on one all-staff meeting that week via webex (20-30 minutes) and one in-person team-meeting (30-45 minutes) with me that week or the next week. I am almost ready to calendar these times, but my own calendar is still changing frequently as we get closer to the start.
Plan on limiting your interacting or mixing with the different grade levels. Think “staff cohorts”. More on this later.
Communication to families
I will start up my weekly communication with families this week with our Newsletter. This is a little earlier than usual, but…well, you know, nothing really qualifies as “usual” right now does it?!?
BLPO Enrollment
We will be tracking these numbers shortly but as of today we only have 5 students signed up. Some things to know about BLPO.
This is being stated as a year-long commitment. (However, at the elementary level it’s not as crucial for them to remain enrolled for an entire semester or year, so technically we can take them back at any time into our CDL/Hybrid program.) The semester or year long commitment is really most relevant at the secondary level.
Some students may double-dip – completing CDL in addition to a BLPO course on line (for example, math). This is OK. There might be some tricky conversations to navigate, but this is a way for some families to find extra challenge for their students.
Instruction
Message from Skip on Standards of Practice and Schedules: This year, our district is working on developing a common elementary school schedule and teaching standards of practice in order to support a more uniform roll-out of Comprehensive Distance Learning. Although we don’t have final materials to share at this point, they will be coming within the next two weeks and we felt that it would be important for teachers to know what they might expect. This work is being informed by community and staff feedback, as well as input from BEA, the school board, and teacher leadership teams. This schedule outlines teaching times as well as teaching expectations and teaching tools that allow our district to align with state guidelines/requirements. Opportunities to learn more about these standards of practice and ask questions about them will be provided shortly after they are released.
To facilitate sharing lessons and consistency for your teams, please designate somebody to create and maintain a google folder with your content for the year. Once it’s created please share it with me.
It’s important to make everyone on the team an “editor” so everyone can add or modify material in the folders, but it’s a good practice to designate one person to keep it organized.
Within that folder you should create separate folders for Writing, Math, Storyline, etc.
If you are uncertain where to start or how to start and/or this feels even just a little overwhelming then just let me know and I will get you started.
Technology
WebEx things to know…
Once we signed a contract with WebEx we then moved off their free version and onto a paid, supported version. For some reason this meant our WebEx address changed so settings need to be adjusted by everyone. Here is a quick video you can send to your staff in an upcoming note on how to change their settings.
WebEx has some fabulous changes coming our way that we are hoping will be in effect Sept 1st. The biggest is the addition of breakout rooms. The instructional tech team will be putting together a list of the changes along with tutorials for them.
Our wonderful district librarian Christie Boen has created a document to help you plan for how to best use your libraries and your librarians during distance learning. It’s just a guideline. We realize each school might do things a bit differently. You can access her document here: Libraries During Remote Learning
Heads up…
As we head into the school year we will need to form the following teams/committees at each school site (part of the Blueprint requirement):
CDL Team – School Curriculum/Instruction Team
Culture of Care/SEL District – School
Family Connections District – School
Return to School Buildings Hybrid (Safety) – School
You do not need to do anything just yet, but I wanted to provide a heads up and let you know that we will need to reorganize some of our existing committees (Design teams) to meet this requirement. More on this later.
Staffing Update
Primary Teacher Interviews are this Thursday.
Student Services/Student Success Coordinator – after several discussions with Skip, I will not be replacing the Student Services position this year. I will be increasing Heidi Thomas’ Student Success Coordinator position to .8 and she has agreed to take on a few of the typical Student Services responsibilities. Since this is a new position, I am sure there are quite a few questions about how this position will function and serve our students. We’ll do our best to provide some clear direction for both Heidi and the rest of you, but please know and expect the position to evolve over time, especially when we move from CDL to Hybrid at some point in the future.
Heidi’s role will be to facilitate and support Social and Emotional Teaching across the entire building.
Her role is to facilitate SEL across content areas so that it becomes part of everything we do and not separate additional content area.
She will work with us to refine our instructional practices and environments to be congruent with Trauma-Informed Instruction. If you are interested to learn more about what this might look like, Classroom 180 by Heather T. Forbes is a great resource.
Heidi will also assume the role of PBIS team leader (Formerly Thriving Citizen, likely to become a new team title in the future…)
Heidi will assume the role of 504 Coordinator and she will also help lead the IPS process when appropriate.
She is not “The SEL teacher” who delivers stand-alone SEL lessons to kids similar to our PE/Music model. That title carries some preconceived and inaccurate notions for the role.
Let’s also avoid titles such as, “The Behavior Teacher”. One of her roles will be working together with you to support lagging skills and it might look like: check in check out, scheduled breaks (purposeful and structured), goal setting, someday social groups. This will support all students but especially those with lagging skills in social and emotional development.
During this CDL period, Heidi would like you to know she can be available to connect with students needing a little more frequent adult support and one on one connection.
Heidi Evans will be increased to 0.8. Reading intervention is being reinvented beneath our feet, so this increase is the best I can do to accommodate such a drastic change to this important need for our students.
I am also increasing Rob’s time to 0.8. The music curriculum Rob will be using has a high degree of SEL messaging tied to it and I am hopeful it can help to lighten and brighten days for our students during this CDL and eventually Hybrid times. Rob can also support any of you with your instructional technology struggles as he has proven to be very tech savvy and creative. He provided a lot of support to many of you in the spring, so I feel this increase will support his efforts to support you (and me!!).
Schedule for Decisions on Returning to School Steps (comprehensive distance learning, balanced/hybrid, “all in”)
Although we must always leave room for flexibility and changes due to the rapidly changing nature of our understanding of this virus and its impact on schools, below is the chart we’ve created for district decisions:
A quick tribute to this little princess….Some of you may have met this little princess, Leia, at some point at our home (way back when we used to be able to gather). Leia and her brother Luke have been a part of our family for the past 9 years. I’ve always been a dog person, however since Amy is a cat-person, that naturally caused me to be a cat-person by relationship however Leia fully converted me. She was my trusty companion while working from home during this COVID closure and in fact, she attended a few of our WebEx Staff meetings each week. Since our move to Oregon, Leia has increasingly turned into a night time huntress. We were never fully comfortable letting her out because of the coyotes and owls in our neighborhood, but she was always relentless whining and crying about getting out so of course, we caved and let her run wild. She always came back each morning, so we started to question it less and less, but unfortunately, she has not returned for the past several days. As much as I would like to believe she ran off to join the kitty-circus, I think I have to accept that she finally met her match in terms of the predator-prey relationship – may she rest in peace. We love you and we’’ll miss you, Leia!
First Building Administrator Training Video
Dr. Lee presents Can’t Touch This Covid ParodyDr. Quentin J. Lee, Alabama principal, sings a rap song about Covid to MC Hammer’s classic hit of “Can’t Touch This.” As we are all getting ready to go back …youtu.be
If you would like to get more information faster, then please see this link below, otherwise, I will continue to pick and choose items as I feel they are needed for our purposes.
New Laptops – we have 7 new laptops for staff. I will email a group of you separately depending upon the age of your machine so we can rotate these new machines into the inventory. Please work with Hannah to complete this asap, because we will rotate your machines into the hands of EAs which will give them much improved speed and connection.
Working in the Building – our building is still not quite ready for you to come and work in your rooms. With Brad out after his roof-diving escapade we are without a lead at our site and the district does not typically replace a lead during the summer. Tim is primarily working on the cafeteria floor and Walt has some different people finishing up the rooms – I will keep you posted on when the rooms are ready for you. Looking forward:
For CDL in the fall you are permitted to work from home however you are welcome to work from the building. You are still permitted to bring your kids, but please be sure they stay within a relatively confined area of the building.
Even if you are working from home, if for some reason you are needed in the building you will be required to report so long as you’ve been given 24 hours notice. I can think of two main reasons this might happen;
meetings (see bullet points below)
Parent concerns regarding CDL and need for support.
Office staff and administration are expected to work from the building, however once we are up and running I plan to provide some flexibility for Shawna to work from home and eventually a newly hired secretary.
Our office will be open to the public soon, however nobody other than staff will be permitted to go past the welcome area.
We still do not have any clearance for any students to come into our buildings (meeting kinders, assessments, etc.) and the BEA and district leadership is making it clear that we cannot do this “off-line” at a park.
We will be able to provide K-1 packets and we will need to provide some drive-by pick up times in the future for these.
I am planning weekly grade-level in person meetings beginning on our start-up week. This will keep group sizes small and allow for in person contact. We will meet in the gym so there will be more than adequate ventilation. We can establish our standing times later, but I just wanted to share.
For All Staff Meetings, I will do these via WebEx. I will work out a schedule for these in the near future.
Lora will be sending a more formal survey soon regarding your intentions for work in the fall, but for my planning purposes only please let me know whether you are working in building or at home; Fall CDL 2020
Communication to families
The plan now is for Lora to provide a parent survey to principals this Friday. I will be providing a brief welcome message with some key information at the time and then asking parents to commit to BLPO or CDL in Lora’s survey. After a week Shawna will be calling in our EAs to help with follow up phone calls for anyone who has not responded.
BLPO registration opened up this week so we will already have some idea of how our numbers are changing.
Some other items to know;
We are not posting class assignments early and in fact I will delay by a week due to starting late.
While we may need to adjust some class placements due to some shifting numbers, we are not going to adjust placements due to pods, or other similar day-care arrangements. Disrupting our placement progress with all these requests will likely concentrate our underserved students into one class.
As I mentioned in earlier posts, the district messaging will be promoting and promising consistency across grade levels for CDL. We are scheduled to receive some Standards of Practice and sample schedules this Friday and I believe these will also be shared with the public next week.
Technology Update
I forgot to mention that we will be using the premium version of SeeSaw.
Also the district is working on providing iPads K-2 district-wide (K-1 for us). They are working on “stripped-down” version with only the essentials for primary grades.
More Parent “How-to videos” are in the works to help with the set up of these devices, but once these are out this should alleviate quite a bit of discrepancy in terms of access.
This decision and process is still in the early stages, so please wait for the official announcement from the district before sharing too widely.
Staffing Update
I am happy to announce that Becky Hildebrand will be joining the 1st-grade team!
The primary teacher position closes Tuesday. I’ll do my best to screen these by Thursday or Friday this week. I am targeting Thursday, August 20th for interviews and possibly Friday 21st. So far, my understanding is Anna, Deanna and Alicia are interested in being on the interview committee – let me know if I missed anyone.
Student Services – FYI – I will most likely be posting for a 0.5 Student Services after we get the teacher position squared away.
Secretary – still holding off on this one for another week or so.
