TO DO:

If you have staff who need coverage for receiving vaccination during school hours… For staff who need to be out of the building for vaccinations shots or who have post-injection illnesses that prevent them from working, identify the absence under “other” and write in “vaccination” on the Leave Sheets. HR will be communicating with office managers about how to code other COVID-related leave.  _________________________________________________________________________________

As you know, the second round of vaccinations are upon us. What you also may have heard is that 20-30% of those who receive this second vaccination have side effects noticeable enough to keep them out of work for one or more days. If a staff member needs to take leave due to symptoms after vaccination, please code both of these as “other leave” and put something like “illness due to vaccination” in the reason for leave. This will come out of a staff member’s 5-day COVID leave, and not the typical sick leave allocation. Let me know if you have questions about this. _________________________________________________________________________________

Please share this substitute request flow chart with your office manager and anyone else that you think may need/use it. Please remind your Office Manager to put leave requests in early (as early as they find out) and check them often. A number of sub requests have not been getting filled through the ESD already this year.

THIS and THAT:

There is a new MS/HS safety video posted on our district’s website that may be worth passing along to your parents in a future communication. Here is the link to that video. _________________________________________________________________________________

Now that schools are reopening for in-person learning, I wanted to reshare this helpful social media guide that also applies to school newsletters, websites, teacher emails, and any other communication to families. Please be sure that the photos you share reflect the consistent safety practices you have in place in your buildings.

A few keys: 

• Mask up! All photos on campus should include students/staff wearing masks over the NOSE and MOUTH 😊
• Keep your distance. Make sure folks are spread out in any photo shared. 
• If you use a photo that is pre-pandemic, be sure to list the year it was taken when you share it. 

Questions? Email Alandra any time! _________________________________________________________________________________

As you know, February is Black History Month. You may or may not have seen this blog post regarding some highlighted Black authors and recommended videos that could be used for instruction this (or any) month. I watched one of these videos, as the title caught my eye: “The exceptional life of Benjamin Banneker.” Here is a link that will bring you to this video (on the right side of the page), as well as other educational resources. The video is definitely appropriate for MS-aged kids (likely geared more towards a younger audience), and the 3:30 clip kept my attention and left me wanting to learn more. _________________________________________________________________________________

If you have any new/temporary certified staff for the remainder of this year, here are a couple pieces of evaluation news that you need to know:

The temporary teachers that we are hiring right now will not work the 135 days to count as a full year for TSPC.

Therefore, we are not required to complete the two formal observations.  Since we are halfway through the year, I would recommend that we have administrators complete a minimum of two mini observations.  I’d also like them to complete an evaluation so that we have a record of how the teacher performed this year.  Let Jon or myself know if you have any questions regarding this. _________________________________________________________________________________

Following are some questions regarding quarantining that Scott O. asked and Paul Dean and Tami Pike responded to. Thought you might have (or likely will have) the same questions asked of you soon…

• If there is a positive case in a school, all families are given notification. All families and staff
• Only students/staff who were close contacts of the positive case subject will need to quarantine. YES
• Only students/staff who were close contacts of the positive case subject will be notified that they shared a space/class/etc. with the close contact. YES
• Close contacts are those within 6 ft. for 15+ minutes total in a day.  YES, in most instances. If a staff person or student is unsure about whether or not they meet the close contact criteria, more than likely quarantine will be warranted. The contact tracing team will determine. 
• I am also directing staff NOT to fill out entire class lists as close contacts just because they have them for 65 (and in some cases quite a bit more) minutes.   YES _________________________________________________________________________________

Following are a number of updates from Paul…

Short Term Temp Dates:

 Any temporary classified people hired after the dates below, will not qualify for medical benefits.  HR communicates this at time of hiring but we recommend schools inform interviewees too:

• EA ‐ HS (Bend and South County) (182 days) 02/18/21        
• EA ‐ HS (Skyline and Marshall ‐ Trimester schools) (181 days) 02/18/21
• EA ‐ HS (REALMS ‐ Trimester School) (179 days) 02/17/21
• EA ‐ MS (Bend and South County) (179 days) 02/17/21
• EA ‐ MS (REALMS) (179 days) 02/17/21
• EA ‐ ES (Bend and South County) (177 days) 02/16/21

New County Metric Guidance

Last week, the state issued new indoor/outdoor guidance that applies to our after-school activities.  Here is the information to share with your team (mostly applicable to high schools) for Deschutes County which is still in the extreme zone.

Rapid Testing

RSSL requires schools to have the capacity to offer rapid COVID-19 tests (BiomaxNOW) available to symptomatic students/staff by March 1.  Here is the rollout timing:

• Week of Feb 1 and 8: District personnel attend OHA trainings and develop district and school based protocols
• Week of February 16:  Information sessions for school personnel; BiomaxNOW registration and testing kiit ordered by each school.
• Week of February 22: Final site coordinator and testing facilitator Q&A
• Week of March 1: Testing available for symptomatic students/staff at each school site

MOU

In order to satisfy this requirement in the MOU:

Each school site will post the school’s COVID-19 Safety Checklist and a copy of the OSHA emergency temporary standards on the safety bulletin board.

Please post a hard copy of your latest Checklist and a hard copy of this document (103 pages) on your staff bulletin board.

BLS COVID-19 Cases

The district will be creating a dashboard that reflects positive COVID-19 cases within our schools.   The data will be updated every Wednesday after OHA’s weekly Kindergarten-12th grade school report is released.  We will also include a list of FAQs to explain more information about the data.  

Non-Masking Students On Buses

If you receive a complaint of students not wearing masks on a bus, it would greatly assist transportation if you can gather the following information prior to emailing Kim/Tina:  

1. Your school and the bus route number
2. Reporting student’s name (to check their assigned seat number)
3. Seat number (all bus seats have seat numbers) or name of non-mask wearing student
4. Time of day (i.e. 2:15pm)

Ideally, students should report non-masking behavior immediately to the bus driver.

REMINDERS:

Last week I shared the following message with you (which also came with a task), but I did not have a Chinese language version of the letter to share at that time. Here is the Chinese language version – as well as part of the message from last week: Please share this letter (English and Spanish) in your next parent communication. [Don’t forget to make a copy of these letters first – as well as check the access to the link to make sure parents can view it.] This letter outlines the communication steps that will occur every time there is a positive COVID case at a school.  _________________________________________________________________________________

Here are links to two documents that Jon referenced in our Horizontal this past Tuesday. First, the final MOU with BEA for Hybrid instruction. Also, this MOU key points document. _________________________________________________________________________________

Don’t forget (I spoke about this at Horizontal earlier this week) to have someone follow-up with reaching out to students enrolled at your school but do not show up next Monday or Tuesday. We want to make sure all students are accounted for (and enrolled in the program they plan to finish the year in). _________________________________________________________________________________

Don’t forget that we’ve moved our Horizontal meetings to Tuesday mornings at 8:00am. We will still meet in my Webex room. _________________________________________________________________________________