This and That:

• Dean Richards, a sought after statewide EBISS trainer – and BLS employee, will be available next year to support the work you are doing around analyzing and strengthening your school EBISS systems. Although on paper Dean does not have a lot of time to do this work (only two hours a week), he is up to the challenge!The minimum expectation that I have of all buildings is to coordinate a time for Dean to come visit with you about what your current EBISS systems/structure looks like and the process in place to identify and support students who need it. Preferred, but not required, is to have Dean also observe an EBISS meeting at your site as part of this process. This step could occur as soon as this spring, but should be completed no later than Thanksgiving break next fall. Feel free to reach out to Dean in order to schedule a time at any point prior to then.  He can be reached through district email or through his office extension (x 1078).Once the initial consultation with each middle school has been completed, Dean will spend the remainder of his MS EBISS time next year consulting and supporting one or two schools where there is interest and need. What Dean’s EBISS role will look like with a specific school will be further developed once the initial analysis has taken place.I am thrilled to have Dean made available to you as an EBISS resource and trust his expertise will be invaluable to you no matter where you are in the process of this work. Please let me know if you have any questions at this point regarding this.
• We have just finalized the certified 2016-17 work calendar for the week prior to school starting.  You can find the calendar and corresponding explanation for these days here or in the BLS Docs folder in TRIBE.  Let me know if you have any questions regarding this. (I see that Lora just sent this out via email to you as well – so now you have it in two spots!)
• I was recently made aware (wearing my district student discipline hat) of a half dozen instances where a student within our district was suspended out of school at the end of the 2014-15 school year.  The days of suspension continued on into the start of the 2015-16 school year.  In most of these instances the student did not serve the suspension at the start of this year.  There are a variety of reasons for this (student transferred to a different HS, the student went from MS to HS, etc.).  My point in bringing it up now is to communicate that if a student has committed an offense that warrants an OSS during the last days of school this year, please make a note to follow-up with this again in the fall – especially if the student does not return to your school.  Hopefully incidents of students receiving OSS in the waning days of the school year are very rare.

Reminders:

• I am on the road Friday to PDX and back to pick up our daughter as she returns home for the summer from college.  If you need to reach me please feel free to call or text my cell phone.