Supply Lists-As promised (two weeks ago), please take few minutes to complete this spreadsheet on supply lists. Please let me know if you would like to be on a small team to look at what we are doing and come up with a plan that moves us closer to fulfilling our obligation of FAPE.
Early Entry- Our current early entry policy and process for kindergarten has been unchanged since 2002. Some of our school psych’s who administer our early entry assessments suggested that it was time to take a look and see if we might make some revisions. Kevin Gehrig and I have met with some reps a couple of times and created some revisions that I recently brought to cabinet. A summary and revised policy is linked. The main ideas are that the standard would be decreased to align more closely with grade acceleration, the cost would increase to be more representative of the work that goes into testing, the scheduling process would be more centralized, and policy would change to match revisions and put less of the decision making weight on principals. I wanted to share with you and ask for any last minute feedback before finalizing. I would like to finish asap so that we can use moving into next year. Please let me know any questions/ideas you may have by next Friday.
Staffing- Thanks for your help, thinking and patience as we work on this puzzle and ensure that everyone has a place to teach next year! As mentioned, our goals in the transfer process are to have teachers excited about their move and principals excited about who is being transferred to their school. High Lakes, Ponderosa and Lava Ridge, all schools needing to reduce, have shared this fact with their staffs and distributed an interest form that includes schools and grades teachers would be interested in working. Those forms are due by the end of the day Monday. Next week sometime, Jon and I will meet with reducing and receiving principals to try and move people and accomplish the above goals. My hope (maybe a bit optimistic) is to have this completed and notify moving teachers by the end of next week. I am only certain about a couple things. One, we probably won’t get it perfect. Two, we have a great group of principals who will do our very best and work for the good of all of us. I will keep you in the loop and updated as much as I can.
Title I- We received an initial allocation from ODE that is about $55K less than last year. Over the past several years, our final allocation that we receive in August has been substantially less than our initial. JoAnne is calculating the average % difference between initial and final over the past 4 years. We will probably use that as a starting point for allocations. One other thing we will do this year is use our numbers from May 1 instead of April 1. So, you have a few more weeks to collect any F & R lunch forms. We’ll keep you posted. Call with any questions.
EBISS Interviews- Last year the EBISS team met with nine schools to interview staff and review EBISS systems in an effort to find themes and areas that they could provide support in order to help schools implement more efficient and effective EBISS systems. The other nine schools will participate this spring. Please sign up for a date/time if you didn’t participate last spring. The EBISS team has also provided a principal’s packet and ORSIS consumer guide for your information. Contact Julie Walker if you have questions.
Mental Health PD- There is a professional development class occurring on April 18, Youth Mental Health First Aid, posted in Performance Matters. Jim B. took this training a few years ago and found it very worthwhile. Some staff that I would suggest attend are admin, counselors, SPED teachers and any classified employee. The training is free (provided by Deschutes County), but subs would be the responsibility of your building. Registration needs to occur by April 12 in order to verify adequate numbers will be attending.
Out @ PD-Just a heads-up that I will be out of town (available only by cell or email) on Monday afternoon (4/15) through Thursday (4/18). The ESD is bringing a team from Central Oregon to the Carnegie Foundation Summit on Improvement in Education, and Jim, Jay and I are representing BLS.
That’s it for now. Thank you for all you do. It is a crazy time right now and I feel fortunate to work with such a great team. I hope your weekend is a good one!