To Do:

• If you haven’t yet, begin talking with your certified staff about SLGGs for this year.  The target for getting these set is the end of October, but you may allow until the first week or so of November if needed, due to the late start you had.

This and That:

• You will likely be getting a call soon (as soon as next week) from Nick Stevenson from Deschutes County Health regarding Positive Community Norms (PCN) – a health initiative aimed at lowering youth substance use through education and communication from a positive lens (e.g. In the past month 97.8% of 8th graders at SVMS report not smoking). As most of you may recall, Nick and Jessica Jacks came and spoke briefly about this at one of our last Horizontal meetings of the year last spring. There are a handful of pieces to this project if you elect to become involved – turning over an SIW for staff training/surveying, guest speakers in health classes, outside of school surveying of students/parents – to name a few.  LPMS piloted this program last year, so feel free to ask Robi about the impact it had with students (I believe it was positive), as well as the commitments she had to agree to as a building leader.  Overall, I believe it can be a program that can produce successful results, but it is up to you to decide if you’d like to be involved or not.  I do thank the county for reaching out and offering to be a partner with us to reduce youth substance use.
• There have been some articles regarding PERS in the media lately.  I’ve linked to one from the Oregonian (9-21-16) entitled: “‘This is becoming a moral issue’: Officials face truth behind Oregon’s soaring pension costs” that I think might shed some light on future costs for our district.  Without sugar coating it, it is not very sunny.  Here is one quote from the article that summed it up for me: “As it stands, pension payments cost government agencies and school district across the state about $2 billion every two years, and they’re panicking about the $885 million, or 44 percent jump, in required payments in the next two years.”  For Bend-La Pine, our projection at this time is that these PERS increases will cost us approximately another 4.5 million next year – not taking into account any ballot measures, which we’ll know more about after the November election (and could help or hurt this overall dollar figure).  The good news is that we have an outstanding team keeping track of these potential developments and they have weathered many financial storms for our district in the past – so there is no doubt we’ll get through this one as well.
• One other (very short) article I want to pass along came out of the publication School Leaders Now and is entitled “Principal’s Perspective: Elephant in the Room.”  It speaks of not only the difficult task you have of making decisions that are popular with some and not so popular with others, but also recognizes the fact that often people who are not pleased with your decision do not have the same perspective as you do.  Your job is not easy – but you are in a position of leadership at your school because we believe in who you are and your skills in making sound decisions.  I just wish the author would have called out the fact (in her last sentence) that when things “come into focus” for others, it is a rare occurrence that they come back and thank you for your insights and wisdom.

• Here is a contest where students can get some hands-on 4C’s experience: The Verizon Innovative App Challenge allows middle and high school students to develop concepts for mobile apps that solve a problem in their community.  Students compete to be one of eight teams named Best in Nation winners and receive a $20,000 award for their app idea, along with the chance to work with MIT engineers to bring it to life. I’m sure Scott and Brian can tell you all about students at Sky View Middle School winning Best in State last year! The deadline for entries is November 18.

Reminders:

• We’ll be meeting Monday afternoon at 3:15 at PBMS as a Horizontal group.  Thanks in advance to Steve and Teri for hosting us in their library!  Here is the agenda.