To Do:
Our Innovation Conference is coming August 20 and 21! We look forward to kicking off our K-12 Literacy Focus on August 20 with inspiring words from Mary Erenworth! The first day is mandatory for all building administrators and ICCL leaders, so be sure your team is registered. See you at Summit High School at 8:00.
New Teacher Signing Day: Plan on your school admin team attending the New Hire Teacher Day on August 26 at Sky View Middle School 7:30-9:00. Here is the agenda for that morning. Please plan to be there at 7:30 to greet your incoming staff and to set up a spot in the cafeteria with your “signing-day” material. Thank you for bringing ONE swag item (ie: hat, lanyard, shirt) for each of your new teachers. If you will be sharing a teacher with another school this year, please agree prior to that morning who will introduce the new staff member.
Curriculum Question from Skip: Skip needs to know which teachers at your schools are using Study Synch. Please provide this information to him by completing this google doc.
In the spring, we spoke about some of our high school counselor requests to add the status a students’ non-credit graduation requirements to student transcripts. Jim and I asked Patty Givens to show us what this would look like on a transcript to help us determine if this is the best course of action. Here is what adding this info would look like. I am interested in hearing your input on this and making a decision for this year. Principals, please discuss this with your counseling teams and bring your recommendation to our first meeting on Sept 27!
Information:
Community/Parent information nights: Julianne, Jim Boen and I have been working with our partners at Deschutes County Health to schedule a few parent information nights AND follow up CONNECT workshops (where 15-20 parents focus in on the topic discussed at the parent night) related to “hot topics” we are seeing in our community. The first one will be scheduled for this fall with a focus on vaping, marijuana, prescription drugs and alcohol. Additionally, our partners are designing some resources for us to use with staff, students and parents. More details to come, but wanted you to know this is in the works.
Lauren Wood, Drug-Free Communities Coordinator with Deschutes County Health, has extended an invitation to all interested high schools to learn more about the Alternatives-to-Out-of-School Suspension pilot. Here is her message to you: we have scheduled a curriculum training for the graduate counseling students who are supporting the pilot, and I wanted to open it up in case it would be of interest to you or your staff. Please note that the main focus of the training is the content and delivery of the curriculum itself, and less about the logistics for school staff involved with the pilot (which I am happy to meet and provide an overview of). Based on the content, a school counselor at a site that wants to get involved with this curriculum would probably be the best fit to attend.
Training Details:August 16th from 8:45am – 4:30pm @Deschutes County Services Building, DeArmond Room, first floor, 1300 NW Wall Street, Bend 97702,Lunch will be provided
Please register at this link by August 12nd. Registration is required, and also helps to plan for ordering our lunch food, based on any dietary preferences. You will receive a training booklet at the start of the training. Other than having read through the pilot outline (attached), staff do not need to do anything to prepare for the training. I’m happy to discuss further if you have any questions or want to talk through this training opportunity!
Here is some important information from Kinsey related to serving our ELL population: ELL Department Newsletter, Welcoming Linguistically-Diverse Families, and Language Poster.
Special Education Staffing: Two additional resources are now available to you through Special Programs! You have been allocated 70 hours of discretionary EA substitute time and there is a process you and your teachers can access to request additional sped staffing assistance. Click here for specifics related to these resources.
Here is a link directly to the survey to request additional special program staff: Request for Additional Special Programs Staff
One of our district areas of emphasis continues to be on developing trauma-informed schools. Part of that journey includes providing training for our staff as they continue to develop their skills and mindsets around providing social and emotional support for our students. The Collaborative Problem Solving training aligns with our goals around this work. Consider sending staff to the next CPS Tier One training in October. Submit the names of interested folks to Denise in Special Programs.
An important reminder about changes in HS conferences and comp time for 19-20: We have only scheduled fall conferences for next year. Teachers complete 8 hours over the weeks of Oct 14 and Oct 21 (the calendar says Oct 17 and Oct 24, but you don’t have to hold the conferences on those exact dates). There is no school Oct 25 which serves as the comp day for the 8 hours. There are no spring conferences scheduled for the 2019-20 school year.
Here are the office classified work hours by level. Feel free to adjust these times by up to 15 minutes either way to best suit your school/community needs.
STRIVE: We have landed on a few changes related to tracking district programs that I want to share with you. Last year, we ran a HS behavior/expulsion program for 9th and 10th graders we named INSPIRE and housed at the Old Tamarack building off of Hwy 20. This program served several 9th and 10th graders who had either been expelled or were struggling behaviorally in their home school. That program ended with the school year. That population will now be served in the Heart of Oregon Module, located on the Marshall HS campus. Bob Metcalf is our teacher and Steph Bennett will assist in the afternoons. We are going to refer to the program as STRIVE, which means we will not have to recreate a system for enrollment and attendance tracking. Students enrolled in STRIVE will stay enrolled at their homeschool and be concurrently enrolled at STRIVE. I am the contact for placement at STRIVE, but Sal will be the administrator responsible on-site.
GED Program: This year, we will continue to offer a GED program in our district, with three ways students can access the program: through MHS, BLPO and LUNA. Similar to STRIVE, students enrolled in our district GED Progam will stay enrolled at their homeschool and be concurrently enrolled in the GED program.
Students can continue to access the GED program at COIC. In this case, students must be enrolled at COIC and will not be crossed enrolled. Please continue to default to placing students in our district GED program over the COIC program.
Here is the new mileage reimbursement form for 2019-20.
From Sean- Sean asked us to share some information on National Suicide Prevention Awareness Week. Please check out the following fliers: Candlelight Vigil, Mindfulness, True Stories.
Calendar:
The District SIW dates are Oct 9, Nov 13, Feb 12 and March 11. This is a terrific time to encourage your teachers to connect with teachers in other buildings! District level activities will be planned for these content areas: LA PLC teachers, SS CAT team members, ELL, SPED, CTE and Health.
Collective Bargaining Language Change: Article 15, Section C, has been struck from the CBA. This is the language about 50% small group time, etc. Schools are not required to consider this in their SIW planning.
A new section has been added to Article 15. While the CBA is not finalized, this is the language agreed upon: One early-release day (SIW) per month will be allocated for member-directed individual work time, to be determined by level (elementary, middle school, high school).
After gathering input from a few HS Principals, we designated the first SIW each month (except for Jan {end of semester}, Feb {ACT training} and June {Graduation}) for the HS teachers member-directed individual work time. Here are the dates: Sept 11, Oct 2, Nov 6, Dec 4, Jan 29, Feb 19, March 4, April 1, May 6 and June 11. Please treat this time like you would a teacher workday. In other words, administrators can not set meetings on those days.
Here is the 19-20 Administrator Work Calendar. Joanne in our office will be sharing a google doc with you that you can complete online. You enter your non-contract or sick leave days on your calendar then they will populate to your signed leave sheet! So nifty! If you have questions, call Joanne at x1022.
Here is our schedule for HS Admin/HS Principal meetings. I will send the Leadership Team meeting dates as soon as I have them.
Here are the 19-20 school calendars: Bend and SC Elementary Schools, LPHS, MHS, REALMS HS, Skyline HS, and BSHS, MVHS, SHS – ABC Calendar.
Here are the 19-20 daily school schedules: BSHS, LPHS, MHS, MVHS, REALMS, SkyHS, and SHS.
Here is a quick summary of upcoming events:
8/12- Safety/ investigations- 7:30-4:00- Riverhouse
8/14- Leadership Dinner- 5:00- Dana’s house- 62880 Dickey Road
8/20 and 8/21 – Leadership academy- 8:00-4:00-Summit/Pacific Crest
8/26- New Teacher Orientation- 7:30-9:30- Sky View MS
8/27- All Staff Welcome Back- 1:00-4:00- Bend Senior High
9/16-HS Admin Meeting 7:00-8:15 – LPHS