TO DO:

You’ve turned in your school safety plan in order to begin Limited In-Person Instruction – thank you! Next, you will be bringing in a limited number of students under this plan. Here is a link that will need to be completed for every student you bring in to LIPI that requires transportation support (except those SPED students whom you’ve submitted a bus transportation plan for). If you complete these transportation requests sometime next week, then transportation will begin delivering students to you on Oct. 12. If you have students who do not require district transportation assistance, then you may bring them in prior to Oct. 12. Let me know what questions you have regarding this. ** Staff must be logged in to their district Google account to have access to complete these transportation requests. __________________________________________________________________________

Now that you have completed your School Safety Plan (for bringing in students for LIPI), please make sure you share it with your staff so they are aware of your processes and may ask questions they are not sure about. ___________________________________________________________________________

If you remember (Sean talking about this), our district has the opportunity to have a team of secondary staff trained in Restorative Practices this year. This training will occur over four days (two in November and two in February). Please take a look at this document where there is a flyer with more information and a spot for you to fill in the names of your team members from your school who’ll be attending. (The number next to your school name is how many slots you have for staff – including admin.) Once selected, please notify these folks that they need to each complete the simple registration process (link also found on this page). _________________________________________________________________________

Make sure you read and understand the two documents that nurse Tami emailed you yesterday. Here they are for your review: BLP Staff Symptom Algorithm and Administrator Guidelines for COVID-19 Illness. _________________________________________________________________________

THIS and THAT:

If you have any questions at all regarding school this fall, I hope this graphic will clear up your confusion. (Thanks to Skip for sharing!) _________________________________________________________________________

Following is some important information from Jon regarding temporary changes to our BEA contract: Whenever we change the contract, it gives the union the right to open up bargaining.  We’ve reached a verbal agreement around topics that relate to CDL. (Next will be MOU/Hybrid discussions.) I am sharing some of the agreement (in place through Nov. 11) because it will have an effect on what we can do during CDL.

Lora will be sending out a joint statement with the union regarding the need to follow safety protocols and how to address issues.

We have agreed to work with the union to modify our SLGGs, observations, and evaluation process to reflect CDL and the Hybrid phases.  Information will be shared with administrators after the committee has reached an agreement.

We’ve agreed to give teachers more SIW time and preparation time.  Until November 11^th the district will not increase instructional time requirements from the Comprehensive Distance Learning schedules that were established on September 14^th.   We can adjust the schedules, but we can’t add instructional time.  

We also agreed that only one SIW a month can be building administrator directed.  Other SIWs are reserved for collaboration or individual preparation and planning, unless professional training is requested by the staff. 

Staff meetings may be scheduled before or after the instructional day as needed.  If a staff member can’t attend, they will need to communicate that with the building administrator.  _______________________________________________________________________

Some of you have new teachers to our district that were hired late and did not attend our annual “new teacher day” that was held a few weeks ago. Because of such late hiring this year we are going to hold another round of the activities missed for those hired very late on the afternoon (1:00 – 4:00) of September 30. Here is a letter that will be sent to those that missed this day. If you have any that receive this letter, I hope you work with them to attend the sessions planned for that afternoon. ______________________________________________________________________

I think this is true, but wanted to state it just to be sure… Because we are not offering any school-based athletics at this time, we are also not offering any school-based (in-person) activities at this time. Let me know if you have any questions regarding this. _______________________________________________________________________

Another that I think we’ve talked about, but wanted to check-in again regarding, is music classes and PE. When we get to hybrid, music classes will not be meeting in person and we will not have students playing instruments or singing in person. We are also not planning on having students dress down for PE classes when in hybrid. If this is new information to you or you’d like to discuss further, please let me know. _________________________________________________________________________

I mentioned at our horizontal earlier this week that our tech/Canvas folks have been communicating with Canvas that we need to get the grading synch process up and running ASAP. I learned yesterday afternoon that these conversations have been ongoing and fruitful. As soon as next week we should be testing the synch process with some of our schools (to make sure it works as it should and iron out any wrinkles) and then implement across all secondary schools immediately after. Progress is good! ________________________________________________________________________

Paul wanted me to relay some work that our district return to school advisory team are discussing 

• Shields
• Internal metrics to transition out of k-3 hybrid back to CDL (we hope not)
• Promising practices for PE, Music/Choir, Band
• Meals
• Ventilation

This meeting will be occurring today (9/25).  Look for the notes from this meeting later today or early next week.

Paul is pretty chatty today and would also like you to know that contact tracing for pullout support and other small groups that occur may not be caputured in Synergy (e.g. a student uses a space for becoming regulated, or your speech path works with a student 1-on-1). Here are your options for contract tracing in these situations:

• Paper and pencil daily log that is saved for 30 days and can be produced if/when needed.
• A google form or google sheet that teachers use (design one that works for you)   __________________________________________________________________________

A video for teachers on how to clean commonly used surfaces in their classrooms is being produced and will be shared next week. ________________________________________________________________________

A couple of updates from Amy Tarnow… First, when a student has had a schedule change this fall, both the new class and removed class remained in view – and was causing some definite confusion. These dropped courses should all be gone from student Canvas dashboards and currently enrolled courses should be the only ones visible now. Additionally, teachers should only be seeing students currently enrolled in their sections. Second, all digital curriculum (e.g. Dreambox or SS material) should be working for both student and teacher. If you have any students for which digital curriculum is not working, please collect all of these student names and which curriculum is having issues, then email Amy with this information. She will then route it to the appropriate person on her staff to resolve. ________________________________________________________________________

Recently Carly sent out the schedule for flu shots.  Be aware that family members will not be allowed to enter buildings for shots. However, your office manager may reach out to RiteAid and discuss the possibility of an outside table where family members can get the shot.  Scott B. has sent an email to office managers about exploring this option.  Otherwise, family members will have access outside resources for their shot. _________________________________________________________________________

The Frequently Called Numbers list for schools and admin/support have been updated and are available in the Portal. _________________________________________________________________________

You’ve been doing quite a bit of thinking around Limited In-Person Instruction lately. Here is a document that may be helpful in framing some of your on-going thinking and planning around this topic. __________________________________________________________________________

And speaking of Limited In-Person, here are transportation times for both LIPI and Hybrid models (once we get there). Let me know if you have any questions regarding either of these. ___________________________________________________________________________

This just came in from Kyle Frick at Mid Oregon Credit Union. If you have any thoughts/ideas, please let Kyle know ([email protected]).

We are starting up our One Class at a Time collaboration with NewsChannel 21 to identify classroom needs and stories we can share along with $500 awards to help meet the financial needs.

In particular, right now we are looking for programs that help support the online learning process, do you have any thoughts about where we might be able to help with that? ________________________________________________________________________

Huffpost recently had an article that shared some tweets that people shared regarding “the social awkwardness of Zoom meetings.” If you’d like to end this week’s notes with a smile, here is a smattering of the highlights:

when u enter the zoom chat early and it’s just u and one other person — gary from teen mom (@garyfromteenmom)

have grown to love the tension that arises on a zoom call when a single unaware person has noise happening in their background & everyone knows who it is but everyone is also waiting for it to stop on its own so that no one has to do the “…did everyone silence their mic?” thing— Hanif Abdurraqib (@NifMuhammad)

I love Zoom meetings! Because they are online, we don’t have to allow time to get from one meeting to the next! We can just have meeting after meeting after meeting!— Associate Deans (@ass_deans)

the only good thing about zoom calls is when a dog barks and everyone makes them show the dog, so now you get to see a dog— Lane Moore (@hellolanemoore)

unmuting your microphone just to say “thank you. bye everyone” ❤️— NomaL (@lungeIo)  _____________________________________________________________________

REMINDERS:

See you Tuesday at 2:00! ______________________________________________________________________

We had over 400 BLS staff attend the Webex with Logan Clausen, MD, Chief Medical Officer of Central Oregon Pediatric Associates (COPA) and Nathan Ansbaugh, MD, MPH, St. Charles emergency physician, to learn more about the COVID-19 virus and answer questions submitted by certified and classified staff members.  Since the video quality was low and no visuals were shared, we are providing the audio of the 64-minute session. For those who were unable to attend The COVID-19: What Our Local Medical Professionals Know About The Virus, here is a link to the recording. _________________________________________________________________________

A couple of resource reminders… Canvas demos are both available on our website (ENG and SPAN) AND… our Learning Supports webpage has a ton of additional tech tips, videos and troubleshooting items relevant for families (That is also available in ENG and SPAN).