To Do:

• Principals, here is this year’s admin work calendar for you to fill out and return to me. Please take your best guess of days you’ll not be working by blocking them out on the calendar. Please plan to have these returned to me by the start of September. VP’s, you should turn yours in to your principal.
• Rather than try and schedule a horizontal meeting in August, I’d like to come visit with you at your school for 30 minutes at a time that works for you.  Please let me know when you’d like for me to come to your site in the next few weeks.  Again, I’ll try and keep it to 30 minutes of your time and there is nothing you need to prepare for in advance.

This and that:

• This will be the first TRIBE of the year – but I will not send out another weekly post until the end of this month. I did want to send this one out in early August in order to remind or provide you one-stop shopping access to a number of documents and other information prior to your staff returning. This one is going to be heavy on “sit and get,” but I’ll try and make it as painless as possible…
• You may have noticed already, but our fall conferences come a week prior to the end of the first quarter.  The reason for this is Halloween.  We are avoiding making our (and elementary as well) parents choose between coming to school conferences or taking their child trick-or-treating.  Pretty sure we’d lose that one.
• Here is a list of dates/times and tentative locations (tentative because I have not heard back from all of the principals yet as to whether they are able to host on the date suggested) of our Horizontal meetings for this year.  You’ll also find this list stored on the TRIBE BLS Docs tab.

Reminders:

• At our Horizontal last May, we discussed some changes in MS math sequencing and identification of excelling students.  At that time we agreed that it would be a good idea if we had our math teachers proctor the easyCBM during the first week(s) of class in order to help identify any students who should be placed in the next sequenced math class. As a reference, here is the bypass test requirements, pathways guiding principles, pathways info for parents, and MS math acceleration options. And maybe most useful of all, here is the link to the Google Doc with all of these documents (including the bypass tests by grade level). Please note that even though you are going to be administering the fall math easyCBM, you will still be asked to also have students complete the fall math ACT Aspire assessment as you’ve done in the past. There will be further discussion regarding the on-going feasibility of both of these being administered in the fall, but for this year please plan on completing both with students.
• Another item from our May Horizontal that I followed-up on was the question around Article 15 in the BEA contract. As a reminder, the language reads: “One-half day at the end of the first and third quarter for school grading on a quarterly system.” The question was (basically) “does the whole school need to be grading on a quarterly system in order to get this half-day grading, or can those individual teachers grading on a quarterly system within a school have the half-day?” The answer, as a reminder, is that the only way any teacher receives a half-day grading is if the whole school is on a quarterly system. In practical terms, if your whole school is issuing final quarter grades (i.e. SVMS) then conferences start at 11:15am on Oct. 25. If some teachers (or no teachers) are grading issuing final quarter grades, then everyone starts conferencing at 7:15(ish) on Oct. 25. If you already have some teachers grading on the quarter system, a conversation with your ICCL/staff about having everyone issue final grades each quarter may not be out of line.

Calendar:

• Next Wednesday (8.8.18) is our Leadership Academy in Sunriver. If you haven’t already, please let Andrea Wilson know right away how many ICCL’s you’ll be bringing from your school. Please bring a copy of your school’s Design Plan with you. Also, that evening is the annual admin dinner at Mike Tillers.
• As a reminder, Safety Day training will be on Aug. 9 at Summit HS.  Registration begins at 7:30, first speaker at 8:00 and concludes at 4:00. The keynote trainer for the day is John Michael-Keyes, who’s team developed the Standard Response Protocols we use in our district. Please plan on attending!
• If you have not participated in the Take it Up training previously, I encourage you to attend with some others from your staff. It will happen on Monday and Tuesday, Aug. 13, 14 at PCMS.
• You have received emails inviting you to sign up for the Innovative Teaching & Learning conference happening on Aug. 21 & 22 (Tues & Wed) at PCMS.
• The second annual Trauma Informed Summit will happen on Thursday, Aug. 23 at SHS.
• Principals, plan on being at Summit HS on Monday morning, Aug., 27, in order to introduce your new certified staff. Introductions should be brief, warm, and welcoming.
• Our district staff welcome back (with crazy good speaker, Chad Hymas) will begin at 1:00pm at Bend High on Tuesday, Aug. 28. Because activities will end around 4:00pm this day, feel free to encourage your staff to arrive to work at 8:00am that morning and stay until 4:00pm that afternoon.