Information:
From Stephen: Principals, please share this message with your curriculum secretaries and counseling staff.
As an organization, we are working to better track articulated courses and student participation in those courses for data purposes. Currently, this involves calling schools and asking which is pretty inefficient. Therefore, we’d like to transition to a system where these items are tracked in Synergy. As we move to next year, we are asking schools to both designate these courses and track which students are taking the courses for credit in our SIS.
Linked is a spreadsheet with all of the current articulated courses in the district we could find. There are also instructions on how to designate them and students in Synergy (2nd tab). Please let Stephen know if we missed any articulated courses and work with your staff to start collecting this information for the 2023-24 school year.
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Area Change Requests Update: As of February 16th, we received 271 ACR’s. After reviewing the numbers and priority considerations, all of the requests have been approved. The students are pointed to their new schools and families are being notified. The team will review ACR’s again at the end of the year and in early August. Families will be notified of their status after each review session.
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Educator Network Day: Here is the attendance for the February 15th Educator Network Day. There was a increase in attendance of HS teachers. Good news! Thank you for following up with teachers who were not in attendance. Teacher input on these priority standards developed by our teacher representatives last week is extremely important.
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Missing your token for the educator survey? Bree Bender from ODE has advised us to have principals contact their helpdesk at [email protected] if you are missing the email that contains your token. They will be able to assist. If you have any problems after reaching out to them, please let me know and I will help troubleshoot. Thank you Scott Maben for helping us with this issue.
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From Ryan: Please save the date for the Central Oregon Educator Job Fair. It will be held on Thursday, March 23rd at Eagle Crest. As like past years, all administrators will be expected to attend to meet with potential candidates. More details to come from Ryan Kelling.
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From Scott McDonald: Since February 1st, 1,230 staff members have now completed their KnowB4 cyber-security training. That is nearly a participation record for Bend La Pine Schools! Reminder messages will be sent to any staff member who has yet to complete the training until the first week of March. Thank You for your commitment to internet security!
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Phishing Report Tool-
IT wants to remind all staff that there is a very effective “phishing Reporting Tool” built into our email system. If you suspect an email message addressed to you is a scam or in anyway “phishy”, it is 100% okay to report the message using this tool. Use it as much as you want! Getting to the phishing tool can look a little different depending on the email client that you use. Just know that you can always find it in the “meatball” menu (…) that is clearly visible near the top of your email tool bar.
Finally, please try to resist the temptation of sending potentially fraudulent emails to our technology staff. Forwarding these messages can have a multiplier effect on the reach of the scam.
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From Paul Dean:
UKG Go Live Updates For Admin
- Please check and approve/reject UKG My Mailbox requests at least once a day
- Use help desk tickets to track errors
UKG Go Live Updates For Staff
Please check our UKG Implementation and Training website within the staff portal regularly for important information. We will update it frequently (hourly if needed) during the first few days of the launch. The site includes:
- Daily bullet points regarding digital tasks
- Known Issues Log
- Open and Closed fixes
- UKG Support Plan
- Instructions on what to do if you are encountering problems
- Updated how-to training videos and documents
- The newest one is “How current employees apply for another BLS job“
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COVID Sick Days: Bend – La Pine Schools (BLS) and our Associations have agreed to a Memorandum Of Understanding (MOU) regarding the impacts of COVID-19 on the workplace. There is a provision for five (5) paid COVID-19 hardship days and employees have the ability to request retroactive credit for absences that was applied against their sick leave. This provision extends to Confidential/BLAST employees as well.
To determine if you are eligible for the retroactive credit, we’ve created a form for you to review and submit if one or more of the categories apply to 2022/23 leave taken prior to Monday, February 13, 2023.
The form is NOT to be used for COVID-19 related leave beginning on February 13 as staff will be able to designate “COVID” when they submit Frontline Absence Management/Aesop substitute requests or within UKG for non-Frontline/Aesop users.
Calendar:
February 20: Presidents’ Day No School
February 22: New Admin Learning Lab
February 23 and 24: Katie is out of office attending NABE Conference
February 27: Assistant Principals and Deans PD 7:30-8:30 @ Ed Center/Board room
February 28: HS Administrators Work Session 8:00-9:30 @ Realms HS
March 3: HS Principal Breakfast 7:30 @ Original Pancake House in Bend
March 7: Embedded school session with CEL; Principals only; 8:00-4:00 @location TBD
March 13: Principal Professional Development 3:00-4:30 @ Ed Center/Board Room
March 14: HS Administrators Work Session 8:00-9:30
March 15: Priority Standards SIW designated for LA, SS, Sci, Math, WL; virtual meeting
March 20: Assistant Principals and Deans PD 7:30-8:30 @ Ed Center/Wall Street Lab
March 21 and 22: Priority Standards collaboration/PD with Anne McCarty Perez; teacher reps attend; virtual training
March 23: Central Oregon Job Fair 12-6 @ Eagle Crest