TO DO:
From Kinsey: Fall Bias Lesson (this was sent to admin in an email Wednesday)
Here is information on the Bias Incident Student Lesson for this year:
All students should participate in this learning—except those whose families opt them out, as required by policy. Plan for your teachers to complete this lesson by October 27th(Advisory or 1st period would work great again).
This year, the lesson is actually a series of four lessons:
- Required (by Oct 27): the revised-but-similar version of last year’s single lesson.
- Highly recommended: The other three lessons in the series are Wayfinder activities that our equity coaches have carefully selected and sequenced, to facilitate classroom climates conducive to dialogue around identity and bias. Feel free to require the whole four-part series in your building! 🙂
Our LEAD/Equity Coaches are available to launch, preview, and/or rehearse this lesson with your staff at an upcoming SIW or staff meeting in Sept-Oct. They can also come co-teach the lesson with specific teachers when it is delivered to students, but your teachers should be directly involved in implementation.
These coaches will soon share the lesson sequence and updated materials with you and the ICCL member who is your liaison to our district DEI/LEAD efforts (details about that here). If you haven’t submitted the name of that person yet, please share it asap.
Ask of you as admin colleagues:
- Be familiar with the lesson content, in particular the one required lesson;
- Contact the Equity Coaches for any support your staff needs;
- Send the family letter a week-ish prior to your school’s lesson delivery;
- Be visible and participate in classrooms when teachers teach this;
- Ensure the Bias Reporting tool is posted around your school for student, staff, and family access;
- Send any other questions, overly-concerned community members, or feedback my way!
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From Jess: College Kick Off Night for families: Here is the link to share. The information is in English and, if you scroll to the bottom, you will see it in Spanish.
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From Stephen: Dual Credit Tracking: In order to better support our dual credit classes and students, we would like to centralize information around articulation agreements. We are asking that you create a list of all courses at your site that can be offered for dual credit and share it with Katie and Stephen by the end of next week. Here is an exemplar from MVHS. Please reach out to Stephen if you have any questions.
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From Jenn: Giving staff access to Wayfinder Tools:
We are getting lots of questions in our trainings around teachers not having the correct Wayfinder digital tools and workbooks associated with their name.
- My teacher has the wrong grade level materials!
- Digital Tools- Please make sure that the teacher is loaded into Synergy correctly. In theory, Clever will synch with Synergy each night and assign the correct digital tools. If you do this and they continue to have the incorrect tool, please refer to the “Request new tool” feature listed below.
- Workbooks- Your administrator should collect numbers for workbooks needed for the school. This should be sent in one e-mail to Julie Walker, Dean Richards, and Stephanie Bent.
- My teacher is teaching a blend and needs both grade levels!
- Digital-Your teacher should have the lower grade level materials. If they need another grade level to explore, please ask that they use the “Request new tool” feature listed below.
- Workbooks- See above
- My teacher should have access to all grade levels! (Counselors/PE teachers, Music teachers, etc.)
- Digital- Make sure they are loaded into synergy correctly and then ask that they request the tools using the feature below.
Instructional Tech and Information Technology partnered to build an application where teachers can see what tools have been deployed to each of their classes.
https://instructionaltools.bend.k12.or.us/
At the top of this page there is a feature where they can request a new tool
This can be requests to add, change, or remove tools.
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INFORMATION:
From Lora regarding PT staff attending SIW’s:
Article 15, section B of the CBA states that members have the obligation to attend SIW’s consistent with their FTE. For example, .5 certified who work in the morning ARE required to attend half the scheduled SIW’s. The contract is silent on “split shifts,” so that’s not at issue. Here are a couple of important caveats:
- The 90 minutes twice a month need to be built into their schedule. This means that the .5 employee’s work day should be approximately 3 hours and 50 minutes, which would provide 100 minutes every two weeks to attend SIW’s.
- The administrator chooses which SIW’s the certified employee attends each month, in consultation with the employee, keeping in mind that for a .5 certified employee, one SIW every two months should be teacher-directed prep time.
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From Lora: As we begin the 23-24 school year, the district expects schools to enforce visitor sign-in policies, including district staff, during staff working hours-not just when students are present. This means that if you are attending an inservice activity or a meeting at another district site during staff working hours, you need to sign in and sign out. If you are wearing your badge, another district expectation, this process takes about 10 seconds.
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From Stephen: Here is the link to Rick’s presentation from Wednesday if any staff were unable to attend.
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From Doug Pigman: Summer and fall can mean smoky air in Central Oregon. The amount of smoke in the air will vary across our 1,700 square mile District, so recommended strategies to keep the smoke outside will also vary. You can find the DEQ operated air quality station nearest you at:
Oregon DEQ Air Quality Index Map
Indoor Mitigation Strategies
First, please keep your doors and windows closed during smoke events. I know this seems simple, but our facilities have lots of doors and windows, so it’s best to walk the building and check. If you have smoke in the building, opening doors and windows will not help the smoke leave the building.
Second, let the filters do their job. The filters in our air handlers will filter interior air 4 to 6 times per hour. The units will also pull a small amount of outside air 4-6 times per hour, which is filtered as it enters the building. Please do not shut off the air handler units!
Third, use the air scrubbers provided to each school by our Custodial Department (541-355-6601). This added filtration can help in areas that may be smokier than others (ie entryways). If the smoke in the facility appears to be excessive, please call our Maintenance team at 541-355-4700 and they will evaluate the system. They may ask you to shut down the air handler system with the shut-off button at that time.
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From Scott in IT: When to use the Webhelpdesk support ticket system.
There are several ways to communicate with your Bend-La Pine Schools IT support staff. The most effective of which is the webhelpdesk ticket. If you have a quick question, call the help desk or shoot an email to your client service representative. But if you have an expectation, or a request that will require action, you should ONLY use the webhelpdesk ticket system. Why?
• a web help desk ticket will direct your request to one of 30 IT staff that is best suited to answer your question.
• It is the only communication method that will alert IT support if it remains unanswered. (1 day happy and green 3 days yellow and SCARY RED at day 5!)
• It tracks common issues that could be addressed to benefit all BLS users.
Your IT team looks forward to serving you during the 23-24 school year!
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From Scott in Safety: Safety Reminders:
- Please ensure all of your staff are familiar with the BLS Culture of Safety document on our staff portal. This is the document we discussed during Leadership Launch and outlines our key safety policies and procedures.
- All staff that are visiting schools or facilities outside of their primary duty location (i.e. attending training at a school other than their own), need to sign in and out with their staff ID badge at the visitor management kiosk in the front of the school during duty hours.
- All staff need to visibly wear their staff ID badges at all times during duty hours.
- Please remember to complete your first fire drill within the first ten days of school and to complete your Lockdown drill within the first 30 days of school. You can find the drill guidelines handbook and the drill completion tracking sheet on the Safety Resources Google Drive.
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District Athletic Directors: Dave Williams will continue as our District Athletic Director for high schools and Dan Curfew will be the District Athletic Director for our middle schools this school year.
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Sent earlier this week: Bend-La Pine Education Foundation’s fall classroom grants cycle runs from August 29th-September 30th, with funds distributed in October. Check out the flyer for more details.
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Health Services Support
Our district student support needs have shifted over the summer. We have seen increasing numbers of type 1 diabetes diagnoses along with an increasing number of students with complex medical needs starting school. With these increased needs, I wanted to send out a reminder to schools about how best they can support their student population.
- Health Room Responsibilities
- A (non-nurse) staff person and a backup staff member, (designated by the school administrator) are responsible for the health room duties. This includes medication intake and administration, first aid, students presenting with rashes, supporting ill students, etc. Staff should follow the Communicable Disease Guidance for Schools to help determine if a student should be excluded from school. (Pages 9-10 in the CD guidance specifically address symptoms that are criteria for school exclusion.)
- Administrators, please remind your designated staff about their role in health room management. The school nurse can be notified for an urgent/emergent situation such as: broken bone, breathing difficulty, profuse bleeding, loss of consciousness, etc.
- Student support
- Due to the increased number of students with type 1 diabetes attending sites throughout the district, a (non-nurse) staff person and a backup staff member, (designated by the school administrator) should be identified to support diabetic matters in the absence of a school nurse following the student’s health management plan. The school nurse (or designated substitute nurse) is available by phone for guidance. Nurses will do their best to assist with direct care diabetes support. However, most nurses have more than 1 site they are responsible for and unfortunately cannot be at multiple places at once.
School Nurse Responsibilities
School nurses are responsible for developing, maintaining, and/or updating health management plans for students with chronic illnesses and disabilities (including obtaining health care provider orders for care), staff trainings (health plans general and student specific, delegation and follow up of specific health service tasks, scheduled and emergent medication administration), direct care support, concussion management, care coordination between school teams and community health partners, suicide screening, IEP/504 participation, communicable disease prevention/management, etc.
CALENDAR:
September 4: Labor Day
September 6: Ninth grade only day; regular daily schedule (8:00-4:00)
September 7: First Day of School for All Grades
September 19: HS Administrator Work Session 8:00-9:30
September 28: MTSS Administrator Lead Professional Development @ 3:00-4:00
October 3: ICCL and building administrator training and work session
October 10: HS Administrator Work Session
October 19: MTSS Administrator Lead Professional Development @ 3:00-4:00