Next week is National Schol Counseling Week Link !
How are you celebrating YOUR counselors?
To Do:
Please send this message to your families on Monday: Families and students on the semester schedule will be able to view semester 1 grades in ParentVUE this week.
New to ParentVUE? It’s the parent web portal allowing access to a student’s education progress including grades, attendance, assignments, current IEP, progress reports, and school announcements. If you have not yet used ParentVUE, contact your student’s school or email us, and you will be sent an activation letter with instructions.
Canvas is also used by all Bend-La Pine middle and high school teachers as an extension to in-class instruction. On Canvas, teachers post assignments, share instructional support materials, give feedback, and communicate with students and their parents/guardians.
PLEASE NOTE: Bend Tech Academy and Realms Middle School and High School are on a trimester system.
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UKG and Red Rover: Important! Please work together with your Office Manager to compare your Red Rover absences with each staff absence in UKG. It was recently discovered at a school site where a staff member had been gone a lot. With a deeper dive with the business office to see the report in UKG, they only had 2 days documented from back in October. Red Rover showed the person out a lot more than that. This is a big problem! This staff member is not getting any of their sick days deducted and even took unpaid days without permission. All staff must be using UKG to request all absences (personal days, sick days, school business, jury duty, unpaid, etc.). It is very important you follow up on this and make sure staff are registering all absences (whether or not they need a sub) in UKG. Lastly, it is not the responsibility of the office manager to intervene with the staff member, but they bring it to you when it raises a red flag. Let me know if you have any questions.
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From Kinsey: Action Requested re: Bias Incidents:
As this semester closes, please look back through emails/calls from me to be sure you have closed out the investigation and response on each bias incident report. This includes replying to those messages (if we weren’t partnering on response) with the consequences and outcomes.
Reporting each alleged incident and documenting all response steps takes a bit of effort up front, but is well worth the investment (compared to the hassle when concerns arise from incomplete processes or records). If your team would like to discuss bias incident reporting, response, or prevention with Kinsey and/or the equity coaches, please reach out. Thank you!
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SAVE THE DATE! BLS COLLEGE INFORMATION NIGHT
Families and students are invited to learn more about Oregon colleges during Bend-La Pine Schools’ College Information Night on March 13 from 6 to 7:30 pm at Caldera High School. Families and students in grades 10-11 are invited to attend. To kick off the night there will be a presentation from Bend La Pine Schools (BLS) School Counseling and Oregon college representatives. Attendees will then visit a mini-college fair with representatives from all nine public universities in Oregon, Central Oregon Community College and various community partners. Representatives from BLS High School Counseling and School to Career will also be on hand to talk about key steps for families to prepare for college.
Updated flyers and communication plan for schools will be coming soon, but wanted to get this on your calendars!
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From Dave: OSAS state testing season is quickly approaching. Here is a very detailed summary document I put together to help get you started. Please share this with your school test coordinators (STC). Let me know if you want to meet in person about OSAS logistics. I am happy to come out to your school and support you with this.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mOiq0TreI7wihCJL3c8XWl1DicngbXM4LuTQ46H4fyk/edit?usp=sharing
Reminders/Action Items:
- HR:
- Performance Module Overview Document – Certified Staff
- UKG Performance Evaluation Guide for District Administrators
- Slides from the October 25 BLAST training
- Link for 2022/23 Evaluation
- edition_5_-_evaluation_manual_-_certified_teacher.pdf
- Bend-La Pine Schools: Modified Evaluation System for Certified Staff, 2023-24
- SLGG google form – Staff can either make a digital copy to complete or they can print and fill out a hard copy. These can be uploaded into UKG (instructions to follow)
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Documenting in Synergy–Majors/Minors/Suspensions–Inputting discipline information into Synergy needs to be done within 24 hours of an incident and/or suspension.
Information:
From Kinsey:
Policies (follow-up from Wednesday’s admin meeting):
Thank you for your attention and engagement with the policies that govern our work and decision-making. Reach out with questions, ideas, or if you’d like training/PD for your team:
Here is the policy revision cycle we discussed at the admin meeting. Here is a direct link to the input form if you have identified a particular policy issue that needs attention. Please share as applicable (particularly with staff members or student groups who have an interest in advocacy). Here is the link to the policies currently in the ‘consult’ stage of review/feedback (e-bikes, diploma types, religion, etc), so you can monitor upcoming changes and/or give feedback. Here is where you can search within any of our current policies.
Racial Equity Professional Learning: Our school district is committed to sending all administrators and supervisors to CFEE. CFEE stands for Coaching for Educational Equity. This is a four-day intensive workshop focused on racial equity and the impact of Oregon’s unique history on our current education systems. Sending all leaders to this workshop aligns our shared understandings, common language, and core values as a cohesive leadership team. This alignment supports our strategic priorities, equity stance, and decision-making across the district.
A large portion of our team has already attended! If you aren’t yet a graduate of this workshop, please register for one of the upcoming sessions, or reach out to Kinsey if you have further questions. Level leaders and department supervisors will share additional level-specific guidance with their teams, and Kinsey will be in touch with your registration confirmation or wait-list status.
Emerging Student Needs: The Office of DEI is closely tracking some actively-shifting trends we know you are experiencing regarding populations of extremely vulnerable students in your schools: unhoused, immigrant, unaccompanied, and other vulnerable youth. While these students often do not manifest externalizing behavior challenges, we recognize they have highly specialized needs impacting your school. We recognize, too, that these students require and deserve immediate care and resources that may be unfamiliar or less accessible to your teams.
We will be dedicating time at an upcoming Admin PD to address this topic together. In the meantime, please remember (and remind staff) to feel free to slow down, learn about each student individually, and build relationships. A great leadership move you could do right now would be to shadow a student for a couple periods or ask a few content teachers how they’re feeling with supporting these vulnerable students in their classes. As always, if you have an overwhelming need or unique case that needs immediate support, please reach out to relevant support staff (family liaisons, language specialists, FAN, McKinney-Vento coordinator, counselors, equity coaches, etc).
Asian Family Night/Lunar New Year Event:
Flyer invitations English and Chinese versions—thanks for sharing with your staff and families!
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From Stephen: We will be hosting our first annual life and career readiness night on Tuesday, March 5th from 6-7:30 pm at Caldera High School. This event is designed for students in grades 6-12 and will feature a kickoff from our new partner SchooLinks and then transition to a career fair. There will be community members representing a variety of industries, colleges, and our armed forces present to talk with students and families. We will be using February to start our advertising push so look for language soon to send out to families.
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From Scott M: Enrollment for the Affordable Connectivity Program is ending February 7th at 11:59 p.m., and will NOT be accepting new enrollments after that time. This program is going through a “wind-down” process as the FCC expects funds for this program to run out by April if Congress does not approve more funding.
The ACP is a federal program that provides a discount of up to $30/month toward internet service for eligible households, and up to $75/month for households on qualifying Tribal lands. Many households in our region qualify but have not signed up/have never heard of the program. The more people participating in ACP the better.
More information on the Wind-Down and the ACP Program can be found here: https://www.fcc.gov/acp
Please spread the word and help get households signed up before the deadline. Households can sign up at getinternet.gov or accedeainternet.gov in Spanish.
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From Sean:
Learning Specialist Transfer and Hiring process for 24-25 school year:
Hi all, we want to give you a preview of the process for hiring certified Learning Specialist for next year.
- Currently, we are identifying schools that will have opening for Learning Specialists for the 24-25 school year. These are folks that are resigning or are temporary. You will be contacted if you are on the list.
- If you are on the list of schools in need of a Learning Specialist, you will be invited to the transfer interviews, currently scheduled for Monday, March 4(2:30-5:00). We will have a pool of candidates available that have requested a transfer and indicated that one of their choices is your school.
- If you are at the transfer interviews and a candidate is not selected for your school, you will be invited to the pool interviews scheduled on Tuesday, March 11 (1-5 PM). Also, if you now have an opening because of the pool interviews, you will be invited to participate in this pool interview process.
- There will be three postings for Learning Specialist. A La Pine area pool posting, an elementary pool posting, and a secondary pool posting. During this interview process, we will be looking at new candidates that have applied for learning specialist positions in your perspective pool.
- Once we complete the initial round of posting, interviewing, and hiring for all schools, any additional hiring will be completed at the building level with Student Services admin support. This means the posting will be specific to your school and you will be the hiring manager with support from student services admin.
Please let Josh, Colleen, or myself know if you have any questions.
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From the Ed Foundation: The Bend-La Pine Education Foundation is proud to announce a Spring 2024 classroom grant cycle! This will be on a smaller scale, but will hopefully provide a meaningful impact for educators across the district.
Spring 2024 Grant Application: https://forms.gle/sTQXdnx9sq1dt46GAThe breakdown for the Spring Cycle:
- Applications can be up to $850
- 3 Buckets:
- STEM
- PE
- ART/MUSIC
- If the number of grant requests exceeds the available funding, we will fund 1 grant per school based on date received and requirements met. Teachers who did not receive funding in Fall 2023 will receive first priority. A grant report will be due by Jun 1, 2024.
- Timeline:
- 2/5 – Grant Application opens
- 3/1 – Grant application closes
- 3/5 – Allocations meeting 12-2pm
- 3/6-3/15 – Grant announcements and distributions
Calendar:
LINK to the SIW Calendar and HS administrator work sessions and agendas for 23-24.
February 2: Grades are due and need to be posted in Synergy by 4:00pm – LPHS had 100% of their grades into Synergy by the deadline!!
February 2: Groundhog Day (Early Spring-prognostication by Punxsutawney Phil)
February 5-9: National School Counseling Week
February 6: HS Principal work session, 8:00-9:30 @ BTA Data with Dr Dave!
February 8: Lunar New Year celebration/AAPI Family Night
February 9: Appreciation Cards for SRO are due
February 15: School Resource Officer Appreciation Day!
February 19: President’s Day—This is not a paid holiday; use non-contract time if you don’t work
February 20: HS Administrator Work Session @ SHS 8:00-9:30
February 21: Academic Information Night @ LPHS 6:00-7:30
March 1: Education Foundation Grants are due: www.blpedfoundation.org