High School Rock Stars!

We have been working on a way to simplify how teachers take attendance and landed on a plan this week. I appreciate those of you who have worked on this plan, including the teachers who helped to design and pilot it. We will begin this new attendance strategy at all of our high schools beginning with the start of the second six weeks on Monday, October 26. Please share out this information with your students and staff early next week.

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Share this with your teachers about “Grade Passback”: As we added the “Grade Passback” feature to Canvas for more and more schools this week teachers started to experience errors and failed Synergy Gradebook sync’s.  In cooperation with our IT Wizards, we were able to determine that these errors were caused by the load that all of the data from these initial sync’s placed on our network.  Things now appear to be running well, but with precaution our team is asking teachers, if at all possible, to run their sync’s during their prep periods.  This should spread out requests and therefore distribute the load. 

1. Make sure you have done your prep work for the grade passback. 
2. Run the sync during your prep if possible, to spread out the sync requests. If this is not possible, avoid peak times.
3. Initiate the passback through the grade book by choosing “Actions” and then “Sync to Grade Passback Service.”
4. The Grade Sync page will not automatically refresh to view the progress of your sync. We recommend refreshing the browser instead of using the “refresh” button on the page to see the progress of the sync.
5. Review the details of the grade sync to watch for errors. “Grading Category” and “Not a Valid Score” are examples of error categories that can be addressed by teachers. “Http put” or “Http get” errors are network errors that IT will address.
6. IT will watch our results and advise on any next steps if needed

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In preparation of this Wednesday’s 3:30 Excellence and Equity Collaborative training, each of you (everyone!) is being asked to create, bring, and be ready to share with your group an I Am poem. Here are the prompts to follow in creating this poem. (Plus an example poem from our presenter).

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Share this with your new teachers: Thank you for supporting this PD for our newest teachers! The first of three upcoming Disciplinary Literacy Trainings is coming up on October 28^th from 2:00-4:00.  Please read through the overview of the trainings here.  This training is for new hires (not just new teachers.)  There are a few exceptions: Special education teachers, English Language Teachers, Counselors, DI teachers, World Language teachers, teachers under .5 FTE.  If you would like a specific list of your teachers attending please reach out to Dean.

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Please share this with your staff: To report staff absences, please complete the Staff Absence Form rather than emailing or texting Nurse Maria or Nurse Tami. (See link below.) 
https://forms.gle/pUAvs7J3wh3HRfqP8

Staff Absence Report docs.google.com

Nurse Maria and Nurse Tami will be notified automatically when a new absence is reported on the Staff Absence Report Form and will follow up with the employee. 
If it is an urgent matter requiring immediate attention, please TEXT both Nurse Maria 541-647-7952 and Nurse Tami 541-350-8387 on the same message and one of them will call you asap. Please let Tami know if you have any questions. 

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Please make sure to discuss your LIPI plan with your safety team, which needs to include your school nurse. Your team should review and approve all of the safety guidelines and questions prior to bringing students into the building. Additionally, please share these safety guidelines with your staff and your parents (post on your website?), so these plans are transparent to all. If you have questions about safety guidelines, please contact Paul Dean.

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Drop out Detective in Canvas: We have scheduled a demo with the vendor for next Friday, Oct 21 at 10:00 to view the benefits of a couple of tools on Canvas. One tool is to help teachers and counselors to track student progress and the other one is a tool for students. If you are interested in learning more, contact Amy, Dean or Michael Hicks.

Information:

I mentioned to you earlier this week in our Horizontal Meeting that we have made some changes to our calendar of leadership meetings and professional development. The first change is that we will no longer have any “informational” Leadership meetings for the rest of this year (those that were scheduled to meet the first Wednesday of the month). Information that needs to be shared will be done through horizontal teams. Second, professional development focused on our Instructional Framework will be scheduled in place of these Leadership meetings. The dates for these can be found here (red column). If you have any questions about these changes – or leadership meetings this year in general, please let me know.

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And speaking of leadership-type meetings (and noted above), next Wednesday you should have an Excellence and Equity Collaboration meeting on your calendar. We are meeting at SVMS from 3:30 – 5:00pm. NOTE: We are meeting in person like we did in August. You can take a look at this page if you don’t recall where you met last time. Courtney Tucker with BRYT will be facilitating these meetings for us. We are asking the first two people in each group to facilitate the discussions during the breakout sessions: Michael Hicks and Gabe Pagano will co-facilitate one group; Karen Stiner and Dean Richards co-facilitate a group; and Susie Heydon and Roger White co-facilitate a group.

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This week, ODE sent out a joint letter and a resolution stating the support for the Black Lives Matter movement. We will be discussing how this shift impacts our work with community, staff and students in the future. More to come.

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Safety Updates from Paul: District Family Connections Team Update: Our district teams meets every other Friday and very much wants to support your school’s efforts to keep students engaged and supported with their physical needs.  Thank you for listing your school’s contact on this spreadsheet.

A few schools are experimenting with a mobile bus model to deliver food, clothing, supplies, instructional materials and other items to students’ homes and needy neighborhoods. Email Paul if you like to inquire how this might work at your school.
Some of you requested community resources to support your families. Here are helpful links: BLS Family In Need Website –  https://www.bend.k12.or.us/district/parents/families-need Bend Food Resources English/Spanish

We will be working with the tech department to run attendance reports per school to measure the level of student engagement and then reaching out to schools to see how we can support your work.

Hybrid Learning: The following document has been reviewed by the health professionals and our local county health partners to assist staff in safety measures when designing learning tasks. Risk Mitigation in Implementing Instructional Best Practices.  Please email Paul if you have other instructional best practices that you’d like us to create a safe practices checklist for. 

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Air Quality Index PROCESS REMINDERS

Bend-La Pine Schools service area spans 1,600 square miles. Three DEQ AQI reporting stations track air quality within the district boundaries; two in Bend and one in La Pine.

STAFF:
When readings are over 200, staff working outdoors should be moved indoors.

In La Pine, we watch the DEQ station and utilize the most recent reading.

In Bend, we watch the two DEQ stations and take the higher of the two for the Bend area.

We do not use the 5-3-1/Visibility Scale for conditions at or over 200 AQI, unless the DEQ monitors are down for three or more hours.

STUDENT ACTIVITIES:

Decision makers should be familiar with the following: https://www.osaa.org/health-safety/air-quality and  https://sharedsystems.dhsoha.state.or.us/DHSForms/Served/le8815h.pdf.

Decisions should be based on a combination of the nearest active AQI monitor reading (Bend NE 8^th & Emerson, Bend Pump Station, La Pine Rural Fire Dept 103) AND 5-3-1/Visibility Scale.

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Here is this month’s ELL newsletter. There are a number of pieces of useful information here – including a teaser regarding interpreter/translation services.

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Here is important information from Scott: During our meeting last week, I referenced information about required drills that I would share from Scott. Here it is! Whomever oversees emergency drills should spend some time and dig into this. First, here is our Portal page with district safety training and drill info. (Note: The BLS “guidance” document is worth the read as you plan your drills this year.) Second, the following is a summary of the guidance from the ODE Ready Schools, Safe Learners that requires schools to continue to conduct drills/education during CDL and is on page 6 of the BLS Safety Drills Guidelines:

In accordance with ORS 336.071 and OAR 581-022-2225 all schools in the district (including those operating a Comprehensive Distance Learning model) are required to instruct students on emergency procedures in the school setting and conduct drills to practice emergency procedures. Emergency drills will continue throughout the COVID-19 Pandemic as per existing rules, statutes, and board policy.

We have posted the information about fire and emergency drills during CDL on our district website under the “Emergency Preparedness” page:  https://www.bend.k12.or.us/district/home/emergency-preparedness

Drills can and should be carried out as close as possible to the procedures that would be used in an actual emergency. For example, a fire drill should be carried out with the same alerts and same routes as normal. If appropriate and practicable, COVID-19 physical distancing measures can be implemented, but only if they do not compromise the drill.  

Staff should be trained in changes to drills prior to return to school and conducting any drills in the school setting. All standard collaboration (i.e. fire department, alarm company) and documentation remains required.  

We have also updated the BLS COVID-19 Cleaning Protocols document to reflect the change to our new cleaning and disinfecting product. I’ve asked Deby in IT to update the Return to Schools website with this current document. https://www.bend.k12.or.us/district/home/return-school

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An update from Jon… As you know, we agreed with the BEA to have a committee work on our Performance Evaluation Manual and make recommendations on what should and shouldn’t be evaluated in a CDL model.  For now, we are going to put SLGSs and Evaluations on hold until we get the committee’s recommendation.  We have received several calls asking if principals should be doing mini observations and/or formal observations.  You are welcome to start observations.  We realize that some teachers are a little anxious, to say the least, about being observed on Webex.  This is a great time to remind teachers that we use a collaborative/coaching model for observations.  We are here to help improve instruction and to facilitate a positive learning environment so that students can grow, succeed, and achieve.  We can argue that teachers need more support now, than they have needed in the past.  Also, don’t forget that TLC has developed some classes and materials for teachers that need some support.  We’ll get through this together.

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Here is some info from Misty regarding STAS trainings…

Student Threat Assessment System (STAS) refresher training will be via Zoom this year in order to meet Best Practice and Fidelity standards of the Threat Assessment Model.  A Google Doc is attached for sign up.  Training sessions are grouped together by school-level and a maximum of three schools will be able to sign up for the training time.  The refresher training should be attended by the school’s Level 1 team which includes; school’s admin team, school counselor, school psychologist, and school resource officer.  It is not necessary that school psychs and SROs attend multiple sessions if they serve more than one school.  Following the school’s sign up a link for the training will be Zoom link sent to the contact person listed on the sign-up document. 
Training times begin the week of October 26th, I am hoping that you will share the sign-up link and details in your weekly blog as well as an email to assure that each school is able to find a time that Level 1 Teams can attend. 
Please email me with any questions or feel free to call me on my cell at 541-521-8833. Misty 
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1DVPfeNJVi50qbGV7uEhfMPRho5MdmwunA4p0cQZoIkU/edit?usp=sharing.

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I found this article of particular interest and was helpful to me in framing our current situation. https://elemental.medium.com/your-surge-capacity-is-depleted-it-s-why-you-feel-awful-de285d542f4c

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This editorial for The Oregonian was submitted by a local Pediatrican, Dr. Kate Broadman. I thought you might find it of interest.

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This AR which is focused on Grades and Credit, was recently updated. You should be familiar with this AR. Pay particular attention to the final section entitled CONDITIONS FOR ALTERNATIVE CREDIT LEARNING EXPERIENCES as it provides for more flexibility around granting high school credit.

Calendar:

Excellence and Equity training on Wednesday from 3:30 – 5:00pm. HS leaders will be meeting at SVMS.

HS Administrator WebEx Thursday, October 22 @ 8:00 am

TO DO:

Attendance: At our HS horizontal team meeting last week we landed on a NEW plan for taking attendance and agreed to make the change beginning Monday, October 26. We may have an even more simple way to achieve this necessary task. More to come next week, after we have a chance to discuss this Monday afternoon. Thanks to everyone for putting their heads together to problem solve how best to improve this task!

Attendance: We have been in conversations with Becky in regards to LIPI attendance and contact tracing. Depending on your situation (what day you bring students in on, how many students come for LIPI, etc.), there are quite a few variables. Please follow this guidance for any LIPI student (when they are on-site). This is likely new information and also possible that it is different than your plan – so communicate to all who need to know this. Please call me or Becky if you have any questions!

Students should have the PV absence code removed when they are onsite.  The absence code should be blank (indicating the student is present and onsite).  The students are onsite at the most, 2 hours.  Remove the PV absence code on…

Middle and high schools: The section(s) and/or teacher associated with the visit OR the section(s) that is closest to the time the student is onsite.

Your teachers can remove the PV code.  If you want your teachers to remove it, please let them know.  The PV codes populate during the Mass Change Attendance process, early in the morning.  Removing the PV absence code ahead of time is not an option right now.

More LIPI students onsite in the future?

Yes, probably.  LIPI may broaden to help additional students.  We will work on a process to help with the attendance piece for these students as well.  Stay tuned!

A blank absence code = Student is present and onsite.

Tamarack and Transition Co-op students at the Education Center:  We will begin to use the Groups with Mass Change Attendance as planned for the hybrid schedule.

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Send me the LIPI plan for your building! (got it – LPHS and BTA@MHS!). Sean and his team have developed a MTSS focused district plan to guide how you prioritize which students to serve in LIPI which is reflected in this document.

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Please share this with your teachers (from Scott McDonald): There will be a big change coming with how WebEx is set up that will improve security for teachers using WebEx with their students.  This change has not occurred yet, but it is expected within the next week. These changes should help with managing unintended or inappropriate student visitors to your Webex meetings. The students will log in to Webex in a similar fashion to how teachers log into WebEx. The teachers will have “host” accounts.  These accounts allow them to schedule and create sessions. The students will have “attendee” accounts. These accounts will only allow them to attend sessions. Users from outside the district will not be able to attend WebEx sessions that are created by teachers. Look for new instructions for how students will join WebEx meetings in the next few days.  By the way, the next update of WebEx will also have the most requested item by teachers… a mute button that students can’t unmute! [And a special shout out to Vince Valenti for doing the behind-the-scenes heavy lifting to make sure these changes work!].

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Here is a page on our district website that would be a nice one to bookmark and share with your staff. Recently added to this page is a very simple and clear metric chart that highlights the individual metrics per week, as well as the potential first day we could return in a Hybrid format.

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Be sure to SIGN UP for STAS Level 1-2 Training – 11/17-18 – Registration Link. Reach out to Misty Groom if you have questions about the training and to see if you should register.

Information:

ODE has recently shared guidance regarding Educator Evaluations for 2020-21. Here is a copy of this guidance. As a reminder, the district is going to pull a team of teachers, BEA, building and district administrators together to discuss any modifications that may be in place for us this year. Thank you to Michael McDonald for being our HS admin rep!

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We have decided to not follow the original plan (pre-COVID) for fall conferences. This change mostly impacts elementary and middle schools because those days were originally non instructional days. Those dates will now be student instruction days. Due to the change in fall conferences, our district’s calendar has been updated. Here is a copy of the calendar, with this change indicated. It will also be posted on the website soon, if not already.

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As you are aware, the special invitation ODE meeting earlier this week didn’t reveal any new changes to state metrics or ODE guidance related to schools opening. There is interest in reviewing the metrics. In the PortlandTribune (Oct. 7, 2020), Governor Brown was quoted as saying: “Our Oregon health experts together with school administrators will be reevaluating our school metrics in the coming weeks, and we’ll have an update for you on that very soon.” Asked if “reevaluating” meant lowering the benchmarks for schools to reopen, Brown indicated the answer is yes: “We’re still exploring this issue, but I think it’s fair to say that the statewide metric, frankly, is quite challenging for communities around the state. And my top priority is to make sure that we get our kids back into school safely.”

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Calendar:

HS Administrator WebEx Meeting: Tuesday, Oct 13 at 2:00

To Do:

We are convening work teams of teachers and administrators to review our current Comprehensive Distance Learning structure AND plan our Hybrid schedule. Juan will be working with our building administrators and Dean in facilitating these workgroups: CDL and Wednesday plan review: Lead: Michael Hicks and Dean Richards; Hybrid schedule for 4 comprehensive high schools: Lead: Chris Reese; PE in Hybrid: Lead: Dave Williams; Band and Choir in Hybrid: Reno Holler. Every principal was asked to send the names of your teacher reps for each of these committees to the leads for each work team by TODAY!

In conjunction with this review, we are developing a quick student, staff and parent survey AND a plan for phone calling at each of our schools as part of a more in-depth listening session. FOCUS: improving CDL! More to come on this next week.

Information:

Earlier today, I sent out an election message and an election guidance flier. I am including them here for your convenience.

Childcare… We’ve been working with Bend Park and Recreation Department to provide both a 2- and 3-day option during balanced/hybrid instruction, beginning October 26th (or later, if the district has not yet transitioned to balanced/hybrid instruction by that date). These options will be significantly less expensive than the full program.. BPRD hopes to be able to provide care for kindergarten students as well, if they are children of staff members or siblings of other program participants. Look for a survey coming out early next week to gauge staff interest in this option. I am still waiting to hear back from Park and Rec on the form I created.

New Webex features… Some new WebEx features were recently released. The biggest feature was the addition of breakout rooms – a great way to engage students in classroom discussions.  If you are interested in offering an optional training for your staff please reach out to an instructional technology coach. 

Observations and Evaluations… I mentioned briefly during our Horizontal meeting this week that a workgroup will be coming together to provide guidance on 20-21 observations and evaluations.  We should have information to share from that group soon. 

YouTube Information… Here is some helpful information from John Craft on YouTube and using video during instruction that has been communicated to teachers.  YouTube has become so common that we sometimes forget that we need to venture carefully when using this site.

Something to pass on to staff… Each fall, SELCO awards grants of up to $1,000 to K-12 educators at accredited schools throughout Oregon. If you have a creative classroom idea we can help with, we’d love to hear it. To accommodate educator’s needs, this year’s application period is now open and runs through October 31. Visit selco.org/SPARK to learn more.

Safety Information from Paul Dean: New mask/shield language – The following language has been adopted by our district. See the CDC website for information that supports this decision

New Mask Requirement:  A cloth, paper, or disposable face mask that covers the nose and the mouth is the requirement for all BLS students and staff with some exceptions. When exceptions apply, a face shield is permissible, but other safety practices should be implemented, such as more than 6 feet of social distancing and/or added ventilation of fresh air. The exceptions are described below:

1. For provisions applicable to staff/students protected by ADA or IDEA (details from RSSL referenced below).

2. For safety reasons, such as a bus driver whose glasses are fogging up when attempting to wear a mask under specific weather conditions;

3. For specific and time-limited instructional needs such as speech and language, LIPS reading group, ELL lessons or other examples when viewing a teacher’s or student’s mouth is essential to that portion of the lesson. As soon as possible within the lesson, masks should replace the shields;

4. For younger children moving into in-person education who exhibit severe emotional dysregulation when wearing a mask, staff should employ strategies to transition them from shields into mask wearing: mindfulness exercises, increase in the frequency of outdoor mask breaks, and other trauma-informed best practices.

5. People who are deaf or hard of hearing, or those who care for or interact with a person who is hearing impaired.

6. Other time-limited exceptions of short durations may be made with administrative knowledge.

A clear mask is an acceptable option, as is the use of a shield over a mask for added protection

2. Visitors – New policy

Only BLS staff and essential visitors are allowed to enter buildings beyond the lobby.  Examples of essential visitors are DHS, child protective services, law enforcement, student teachers and their supervisors, CASA advocates, Friends of Children mentors, cadet teachers and ESD service providers.  When in doubt whether a visitor is ‘essential’, consult with your Level Leader.

3. School Family Connections – Please add your school’s family connections team leader to this document so that the District Family Connections team can collaborate with your school on how best to serve students and families.  See Paul if you have any questions.

4. Level leaders will be coordinating with other district departments to send out weekly “All BLS Staff” emails regarding items in their blogs and other important reminders pertaining to the return to the school planning process.

5. Band, Music/Choir, PE Standards of Practice – Juan Cuadros will be coordinating with elementary music, PE teachers, and interventionists to develop learning instructional practices that include safety measures aligned with the ODE blueprint.  He will then do the same with MS/HS band, choir, PE teachers, and interventionists.  

6. Questions/Concerns about COVID-19 related matters.  Please share this flowchart with your staff.

7. Many thanks to the dynamic duo of Nole Kennedy and HDMS lead custodian, Tim Bennett, for creating this “How To” video instructing staff on the daily cleaning routines of desks/tables. 

7. Operation School Bell – The district has approved OSB’s plans to run their program outside with 2 tables and 4 people.  We would go up to a car that drives up, ask them sizes needed for socks and underwear, and give them out.  Here are the details from Susan Heberlein and Vicki Jenkins

We have determined specific sites and dates for our outdoor sock and underwear “pop ups.”  That would be great if you want to give the principals a heads up, but I will be e-mailing all to get approval from them.  Thanks for all your help! 

October 19     Bear Creek     11:00-1:00

October 20     Bend High      11:00-1:00

October 21     Elk Meadow     11:00-1:00

October 22     Three Rivers   11:00-1:00

October 23     LaPine High    11:00-1:00

Calendar:

Attendance review WebEx: Tuesday, Oct. 6 @ 3:30pm

HS Admin WebEx: Wednesday, Oct 7 @ 8:00am

Leadership Team WebEx: Wednesday, Oct 7 @ 3:30pm

To Do:

BRYT Kick-Off training Thursday: Thank you for your participation in the BRYT training this week. I am thrilled that we are embarking on a comprehensive system and plan to support some of the most marginalized students in our schools. These are the students who struggle with mental and physical health challenges that severely impact their ability to access school and be successful! HERE is the link to the sign up for the school focused work sessions. Thanks to those of you who have signed up for your session. I encourage you to invite THESE SCHOOL TEAM MEMBERS to this first school-specific work session. This is where your team will develop the MTSS framework that will help inform WHO are the students who will benefit the most from this work. Next, your team will determine the protocols you will follow to place and support your students. Having this larger group on board for this important discussion to launch your program, is essential.

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Here are the district guidelines for running the PSAT test on Saturday, October 17.

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Read and communicate with your ELA teachers. This was sent to YOUR ELA TEACHERS last week. As you know, our high school Language Arts Teachers have been working to develop Common District Assessments for our high school students. Michele Clements, our HS ELA TOSA, sent this information to your Language Arts teachers last week. Teacher representatives from our high schools designed a CDA for every grade level (9-12) and put it into a Canvas Module for all high school ELA teachers to use. We began our district-wide plan to implement and calibrate these Common District Assessments last March. We will continue moving forward with this plan this year with district-wide calibration in the spring. Michele is developing a training plan to support your teachers this fall. Your role is to set the expectation in your building that ALL of your ELA teachers teach the module by spring break.

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Complete this form for LIPI Transportation: You’ve turned in your school safety plan in order to begin Limited In-Person Instruction – thank you! Next, you will be bringing in a limited number of students under this plan. Here is a link that will need to be completed for every student you bring in to LIPI that requires transportation support (except those SPED students whom you’ve submitted a bus transportation plan for). Transportation will provide transport for your Life Skills students AND students with NO connectivity even with a Hot Spot the week of Oct 5. For students other than these groups, if you complete this form sometime next week, then transportation will begin delivering students to you on Oct. 12. If you have students who do not require district transportation assistance, then you may bring them in prior to Oct. 12. Let me know what questions you have regarding this. ** Staff must be logged in to their district Google account to have access to complete these transportation requests.

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Share this with your staff by Wednesday: Now that you have completed your School Safety Plan (for bringing in students for LIPI), please make sure you share it with your staff so they are aware of your processes and may ask questions they are not sure about.

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Sign up your school team for Restorative Practices Training: We are requiring our high schools to send teams to Restorative Practice training this year. This training will occur over four days (two in November and two in February). Please take a look at this FLIER with more information and please sign up the team from your school who’ll be attending. (The number next to your school name is how many slots you have for staff – including admin.) Once selected, please notify these folks that EACH of them need to complete the simple registration process (link).

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Read, Understand, Ask Questions: Make sure you read and understand the two documents that nurse Tami emailed you yesterday. Here they are for your review: BLP Staff Symptom Algorithm and Administrator Guidelines for COVID-19 Illness.

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Send letters to parents about Oregon Healthy Teens Survey: Jim sent an email about this earlier this week and I am posting is here as a reminder: This is a year to conduct the Student Health Survey to our 6^th, 8^th, and 11^th graders. (Reminder: We used to have two similar assessments, Oregon Healthy Teens and Wellness Survey… now we have just this one.) We use the results of this survey for not only making decisions around supports needed for our students, but also for grant applications that we (or our community partners) submit to support student health. This year’s survey window is from Oct. 5 – Oct. 16, 2020. Here is a document that outlines timeline and process for this year’s survey. Please let Amy Stafford or myself know if you have any questions regarding this.

Within the above link you will find four documents:

The first is a Parent Notification letter, provided in multiple languages. This letter must be sent to your parents (of students surveyed) at least two weeks in advance. (Which is going to be soon!) Please make sure you personalize this letter for your school (e.g. school name, date of survey administration, etc.).

The next three documents are sample surveys for each grade level. These are provided to you if a parent would like to see the survey prior to giving permission for their child to participate.

NOTE: All of these documents are in Google doc and set to be viewable from anyone within our system. They are NOT viewable by anyone outside of our district, therefore you need to copy/share any pieces you want to share with families (as sharing a Google link to these documents will not work).

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Share with your NEW teachers: Some of you have new teachers to our district that were hired late and did not attend our annual “new teacher day” that was held a few weeks ago. Because of such late hiring this year we are going to hold another round of the activities missed for those hired very late in the afternoon (1:00 – 4:00) of September 30. Here is a letter that will be sent to those that missed this day. If you have any that receive this letter, I hope you work with them to attend the sessions planned for that afternoon.

Information:

If you have any questions at all regarding school this fall, this graphic will clear up your confusion. (Thank you to Skip!)

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BEA MOU during CDL: Following is some important information from Jon regarding temporary changes to our BEA contract: Whenever we change the contract, it gives the union the right to open up bargaining.  We’ve reached a verbal agreement around topics that relate to CDL. (Next will be MOU/Hybrid discussions.) I am sharing some of the agreement (in place through Nov. 11) because it will have an effect on what we can do during CDL.

Lora will be sending out a joint statement with the union regarding the need to follow safety protocols and how to address issues.

We have agreed to work with the union to modify our SLGGs, observations, and evaluation process to reflect CDL and the Hybrid phases.  Information will be shared with administrators after the committee has reached an agreement.

We’ve agreed to give teachers more SIW time and preparation time.  Until November 11^th the district will not increase instructional time requirements from the Comprehensive Distance Learning schedules that were established on September 14^th.   We can adjust the schedules, but we can’t add instructional time. 

We also agreed that only one SIW a month can be building administrator directed. Other SIWs are reserved for collaboration or individual preparation and planning, unless professional training is requested by the staff.

Staff meetings may be scheduled before or after the instructional day as needed. If a staff member can’t attend, they will need to communicate that with the building administrator.

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We are NO LONGER using the 6 week time period and developing a new plan for tracking and communicating a move from CDL to Hybrid.

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Mid Oregon Credit Union is starting up their One Class at a Time collaboration with News Channel 21 to identify classroom needs and stories we can share along with $500 awards to help meet the financial needs. They are looking for programs that help support the online learning process. Got any stories to share?

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Thank you Amy and Scott for organizing our Canvas WebEx Demos for parents this week: Canvas demos are both available on our website (ENG and SPAN)

Additionally, our Learning Supports webpage has a ton of additional tech tips, videos and troubleshooting items relevant for families (That is also available in ENG and SPAN).

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Our tech/Canvas folks have been communicating with Canvas that we need to get the grading synch process up and running ASAP. I learned yesterday afternoon that these conversations have been ongoing and fruitful. As soon as next week we should be testing the synch process with some of our schools (to make sure it works as it should and iron out any wrinkles) and then implement across all secondary schools immediately after. Progress is good!

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A couple of updates from Amy Tarnow: First, when a student has had a schedule change this fall, both the new class and removed class remained in view – and was causing some definite confusion. These dropped courses should all be gone from student Canvas dashboards and currently enrolled courses should be the only ones visible now. Additionally, teachers should only be seeing students currently enrolled in their sections. Second, all digital curriculum (e.g. Dreambox or SS material) should be working for both student and teacher. If you have any students for which digital curriculum is not working, please collect all of these student names and which curriculum is having issues, then email Amy with this information. She will then route it to the appropriate person on her staff to resolve.

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Thank you to Paul for putting this Safety WebEx on Wednesday: The COVID-19: What Our Local Medical Professionals Know About The Virus : We had over 400 BLS staff attend the Webex with Logan Clausen, MD, Chief Medical Officer of Central Oregon Pediatric Associates (COPA) and Nathan Ansbaugh, MD, MPH, St. Charles emergency physician, to learn more about the COVID-19 virus and answer questions submitted by certified and classified staff members.  Since the video quality was low and no visuals were shared, we are providing the audio of the 64-minute session.

Audio of COVID-19 Session with Dr. Logan Clausen and Dr. Nathan Ansbaugh 

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Paul wants you to know that our district Return to School Advisory Team is discussing these topics: Shields, Internal metrics to transition OUT of K-3 Hybrid back to CDL (ODE leaves this as a local decision), Promising practices for PE, Orchestra/Choir/Band, meals, ventilation.

Paul would also like you to know that contact tracing for pullout support and other small groups that occur may not be caputured in Synergy (e.g. a student uses a space for becoming regulated, or your speech path works with a student 1-on-1). Here are your options for contract tracing in these situations: 1: Paper and pencil daily log that is saved for 30 days and can be produced if/when needed. 2: A google form or google sheet that teachers use (design one that works for you)  

Additionally, Paul is working on a video for teachers on how to clean commonly used surfaces in their classrooms that will be shared next week.

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Recently Carly in HR sent out the schedule for flu shots.  Be aware that family members will not be allowed to enter buildings for shots. However, your office manager may reach out to Rite Aid and discuss the possibility of an outside table where family members can get the shot.  Scott B. has sent an email to office managers about exploring this option.  Otherwise, family members will have access outside resources for their shot.

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The Frequently Called Numbers list for schools and admin/support have been updated

Calendar:

HS Administrators WebEx meeting: September 30 @ 9:00 (I sent an invite)

To Do:

I’m not sure if you have read today’s Daily Digest that Paul has been sending out, well, daily. The information that he has included in today’s “digest” is pretty informative and is the first two pages of the document linked here. It is a heavy dose of information, so you may want to take it in bite-sized chunks.

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Here is a link to some important dates to get on your calendar. (If you would prefer to wait for it, I’m guessing that someone will create and share calendar invites for some/all of these.) The first column is our traditional Leadership dates/times. You’ll notice that these have been moved from Monday to Wednesday afternoons. The middle column is meeting dates/times when we plan to gather (via Webex and/or small groups) around the topic of Equity and Excellence (likely similar to what you experienced on Aug. 19). Again, these meetings will be held on Wednesday afternoons. The last column is the nine teacher-driven SIW times as guaranteed in our BEA contract. Currently, I’ve asked you to make sure you have time every Wednesday for teacher-directed activities.

Information:

This year our juniors (as well as 6th and 8th graders) will be participating in the statewide Student Health Survey. If you recall, this is the merge of two former state surveys (Oregon Health Teens and Student Wellness Survey). The window for this 30 minute, online, anonymous survey is Oct. 5 – 16. There is a passive parent permission letter (all students are opted-in unless a parent returns an opt-out form to the school) that needs to be sent out two weeks prior to your administration date. (You select the date you administer within this window of time.) You will receive an email from me in the first part of next week that explains this (and more) and provides you the parent letter in multiple languages.

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Canvas Update:  All Synergy-using districts in the state of Oregon who have Canvas are experiencing an issue with dropped classes.  In short, classes dropped in the first 10 days of the term hit the Canvas system in a way that it does not recognize.  Because of that these dropped courses still show up for students in Canvas, and teachers still see these dropped students in their Canvas courses.  Canvas and Synergy staff are both working with us to figure out this issue and we will let you know when it has been resolved.  In the meantime it would be awesome if you could let your staff know we are aware of the challenge and don’t have a fix…yet.

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Bend-La Pine Online Update:  Earlier this week our Online Staff started receiving notifications that PEAK classes were full, and because of this they were unable to enroll students in many requested sections.  This is because of higher-than-normal enrollment in online programs across the state and a shortage of Oregon-certified teachers who were trained to teach online.  Fuel Education is working on both short and long term solutions and as of this afternoon we once again had sections available for enrollment.  If you hear of this happening again, please just encourage staff and families to be patient as more sections will be opened as quickly as possible. 

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Here is some guidance from HR regarding substitutes. I hope this is not new information, but more of a clarification of what you’ve already heard from me…

Substitute Guidance for CDL

1. If a teacher is sick for one or two days there are a couple of options.  One, the teacher can do his/her best to get information and work out to students. If a teacher attempts to teach, then the teacher doesn’t need to take a sick day.  If the teacher is sick and can’t do any work, then that teacher needs to take a sick day.
2. If a teacher is sick for more than two-three days, then the teacher and administrator need to try and get information out to students the best way possible.  This will probably mean having someone that works close to that teacher help get information out to students.  If this happens, please have the teacher that helps complete a timesheet for the work.
3. Long-term substitutes.  We will continue to use long-term substitutes for teachers that are out long-term, on FMLA, etc.

Substitute Guidance for Balanced-Hybrid

We have been working with the HDESD to get substitute training on our systems.  The substitutes that take our training will be identified in the HDESD system (AESOP) as being trained and will have preference over substitutes that are not trained. Once we go to hybrid, obviously we’ll need substitutes in the building.

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This message from Scott “Bojack” was sent to office managers yesterday, and asked that we share with you all too!

The district has placed an order for each school to receive 20 distancing floor decals (keep 6 feet apart). We want to make sure all the decals are standardized across the district. 
As soon as they come in, we will get the decals out to all schools. 
Answers to questions we still owe you:

Will we have a standardized location at each school for the floor decals?

Will we have more decals available through our supply chain at the distribution center if schools need more?

As soon as we have an answer to those questions, we will push that information out.

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Calendar:

BRYT WebEx training for high school teams: Thursday, Sept 24 10-11:30

TO DO:

Please make a note of the following order of contact when you have a potential positive COVID situation that needs to be reported or you need support with (e.g. a potential positive test of a staff member):

1. Tami Pike (Text first: 541-350-8387)
2. Julianne Repman (541-788-6890)
3. Nurse Maria Buagas (541-647-7952)

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We are getting phone calls at the Ed Center from parents saying that they are not able to connect with the counseling offices at many of our schools. The pattern of concern we are hearing is no one is answering the phone, they leave a message and no one returns the call. Our attendance, counseling, activities/athletics, and main offices should be answering calls at this point in time. Give me a call if you have a wondering about this or would like to problem-solve together on how best to get this covered.

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HERE is a fabulous resource for you to send to your parents about Canvas! Created by the amazing Laura Clark! Feel free to send this to your families.

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Share this with teachers: Your teachers my be recording videos as a way for students to access instruction they may miss during a Live session. Please share this video with all of your teachers. By following these steps, teachers will be able to post their recorded lessons within a short period of time after completing the recording (as opposed to the next day if the recording is saved to Webex). Reach out to your instructional tech coach if you have any questions!

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Share this with teachers: Speaking of Canvas… all students have a Canvas “icon” (it’s actually a “web clip”) pre-loaded on their iPad. Additionally, there is a Canvas “app” in self-serve. Here is a short video to share with teachers – and that they may consider sharing with their students that explains how these can be used together by students. If you have easy questions about this, please reach out to John, Scott Mc., or Christie.

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Share this with your counselors: High School Counselors have been asking about how to address this question: As a district, should the high schools be entering new out-of-state students’ transcripts exactly as shown, whether the students were issued letter grades or P/INC for the second semester of 2019-2020, or should we be translating last semester’s letter grades into P/INCs? The answer is we will transcribe what we receive on their transcript, even if that is a letter grade. This will be an issue that comes up with transcripts from out of state.

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Remind your teachers about taking attendance: There was a training for attendance secretaries earlier this week and the following two concerns (teachers being informed that they need to take attendance, and teachers being informed about the PV and NPV code) came up a few times. You may have already communicated these items, but your office secretary may not have received it. Here are our agreed-upon CDL/Hybrid attendance agreements. Please refer to this doc or give Becky a call when you have questions about attendance. Please make sure all of your teachers are aware of the need to take attendance beginning on Monday.

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Information:

As we discussed in our meeting this week, we will be offering the SAT at BSHS in the fall and you can offer the PSAT at your schools in October. In order to safety offer these in-person test, your school safety team will need to complete the COVID check sheet I sent out last week (and reviewed in our meeting this week) AND adhere to all of the safety guidelines. Additionally, please limit the number of students to 100 per session. The charge to administer the PSAT taken on Saturday, Oct 17 is $25.

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Last week I sent you a document called Supervisors Guidelines that is a great resource guide around things you need to be aware of. This week, I’m sending it to you again because it’s been updated to remove language requiring the wearing of face shields by your office staff. Here is the new language: In general, face coverings (masks) are preferred over face shields, as they may provide better containment of small aerosols that can be produced while talking. Clear plastic face shields remain an acceptable alternative in some instances because they enable students to see whole faces. This avoids potential barriers to phonological instruction and reinforces social-emotional cues.

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Check this out when you have a minute: As you know, earlier this week BRYT offered a one-hour Self and Collective Care workshop to any BLS employee (similar, but different to the one that you were invited to last week). There wasn’t an overwhelming turnout, but those in attendance found it very helpful/useful. I ended up recording the session and was sent the slides and a worksheet that was used or talked about during it. I’m sharing these with you as a tool or starting place for your Culture of Care school team and/or sharing with your entire staff (as I think it would be useful). It really is good stuff!

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We are moving forward with a professional development plan to train our staff in supporting our Tier 3 students using BRYT! HERE is a draft of that plan!

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Rumor Control: A few folks have heard that we are moving to a 24 credit diploma and away from a 26 credit diploma. This is not accurate. We will continue to honor 26 credits as our BLPS Academic Diploma.

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As you are aware, we have a number of classified employees across our district who are currently not working (mainly transportation and nutrition) due to CDL structure of teaching/learning. A number of these folks want to work and have been given other work to do – some of which is occurring in your building. If you have one of these re-assigned classified employees working at your site then know that she/he has been given an assignment and an on-site supervisor for this work. Do not ask these folks to do other work than what they’ve been assigned. If you have questions regarding this please reach out to Scott Bojanowski.

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I reviewed the school work teams at our meeting this Thursday. Thank you for having the School Safety Team selected by today. Also, remember they should be meeting weekly and it is important to share out the minutes from those meetings with your staff. Thank you for being sure your staff knows who is participating on your SST AND that if they have concerns they should submit those to one of the members of that team. One of the other building teams that you’ll be forming is for Family Engagement. Please be sure to include your FAN advocate. ________________________________________________________________

This is an FYI only. The following two suicide prevention documents have been shared with your health teacher(s) and counselor(s). One is regarding prevention curriculum, the other relates to prevention safety guidelines.

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Just a reminder regarding meal service availability! It is free of charge through Dec. 31, 2020, to all students. Please help spread the word to your students and families!

Calendar:

HS Admin WebEx Meeting: September 17 at 8:00am

BRYT WebEx training for high school teams: September 24 10-11:30

To Do:

Our Canvas Toolkit for Schools is ready!  It is linked HERE.  We hope it will come in handy over the next few weeks.  This is a compilation of resources that you can deploy to your teachers, families, and staff as you see fit, with other communications.  Note that this also contains recommendations about and directions on accessing and inserting the “Canvas Ready” module into classes!  This module will help students learn the basics of Canvas at the start of the year.  Please don’t send the entire toolkit to your students and families, but instead familiarize yourself with the resources linked here (it won’t take long!) and deploy the appropriate ones for each audience when needed.  

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More Canvas support for teachers: Quinn Daily will also be offering some canvas help sessions at the following times. Interested teachers can just join him in his personal WebEx room: https://bls.webex.com/meet/quinn.daily. Here is the schedule:

Intro Canvas training / Question & Answer Webex meetings: Tuesday, September 8th from 10:00 – 11:00 am; Thursday, September 10th from 10:00 – 11:00 am. In addition, Quinn will also be teaching a WebEx course from 11:00-12:30 during the optional PD day on Wednesday, September 9th.

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🚩School Safety Team & In-Person Education Requirements🚩
Scott Bojanowski has created a document that outlines the OSHA requirements for school safety teams and it includes requirements that you should already be familiar with on page 1.

Scott, Tami and Paul (with input from Deschutes County Health) collaborated on the second part of the document which is a COVID-19 checklist that is required to be completed before schools welcome students back into their building either under limited in-person instruction or hybrid (no later than September 23rd).  The checklist is intended to remind schools about ODE blueprint requirements, their applicability to BLS and elicit detailed information about how your school will comply with these requirements to ensure the health and safety of our school communities. 
This document, along with the documents links within it, will be updated as new guidance is released and is intended to be your “COVID bible” during the 2020-21 school year.  We ask that your safety team to revisit it regularly throughout the year.
Please feel free to reach out to Paul and Scott with any safety-related questions or concerns.  They are also available to meet with individual schools or host a WebEx to clarify any of these requirements.  

Scaling up to provide Limited In-Person Instruction (LIPI) in your building

The district’s Return To School Core Team (Lora, Katie, Brad, board member Caroline Skidmore, Paul) made some decisions on an entry into LIPI.  

1. We will start LIPI on September 28^th
2. We will use a “phased” approach to determine when to scale up or scale back LIPI.  The phases will be based on highest priority and highest needs and will be tied to local metrics. 

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	Activities	When start	Metrics
Phase 1	Evaluations (SPED/ELL) and students with zero connectivity	Sept. 28	Building level – No confirmed cases of COVID within 14 days
Phase 2	Above, plus add instructional supports for students based on need (primary historically under-served)	Oct. 5	Building level – No confirmed cases of COVID within 14 days AND county metrics are below 30 cases per 100,000

In order to be ready for evaluations under LIPI beginning September 28^th, Sean is asking your school’s evaluation team (nurse, school psych, Speech-Language pathologist, and ELL/Title 3) to develop procedures for in-person evaluation.  The evaluation team will use guidance aligned with ensuring section 1-3 of your school’s operational blueprint are met and will share the final proposal ​with your school safety team by September 23.  As your school evaluation team is forming, please feel free to consult and/or participate as you deem necessary.

Check-In Acknowledgement: The school check-in form includes an option for a staff member to decline acknowledgment of non-COVID symptoms and contacts and directs the staff member to “inform the secretary of your declination’.  Secretaries should inform supervisors of any staff member who chooses ‘decline’ in their check-in form so that you can follow up with them before they enter the building.

Update Face Covering Requirements: We’ve been trying to reconcile the different masking requirements offered by OHA (in their August 13 update) and the ODE Blueprint (section 1h) with regard to staff who share workspaces with others.  We asked a committee led by Sean Reinhart and Tami Pike with members from Deschutes County Health and local health care providers to make a recommendation to the district.   Based upon their recommendation, our standard of practice across all BLS sites is ODE’s Blueprint requirement of:
Face coverings or face shields for all staff, contractors, other service providers, or visitors or volunteers following CDC guidelines for Face Coverings. Individuals may remove their face coverings while working alone in private offices.  We are interpreting ‘private offices’ to include any enclosed space with an entry door and where only one employee has been assigned to it (i.e. a classroom).  Therefore, all staff in open-air shared offices, even when 6 ft of distancing can be maintained, need to wear a mask. 

When choosing between face mask or face shields, please be aware of RSSL guidance: In general, face coverings are preferred over face shields, as they may provide better containment of small aerosols that can be produced while talking. Clear plastic face shields remain an acceptable alternative in some instances because they enable students to see whole faces. This avoids potential barriers to phonological instruction and reinforces social-emotional cues. CDC guidance: Clear face coverings are not face shields. CDC does not recommend the use of face shields for normal everyday activities or as a substitute for cloth face coverings because of a lack of evidence of their effectiveness for source control.

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Here is an important note from HR related to classified staff requesting to work remotely: We have distributed the telework agreement you may choose to enter into with your classified staff.  Please read the telework form so you fully understand what you are agreeing to with your employees.  The idea is the staff member does their work at home and abides by their regular work hours, breaks, etc.  It is not meant to give flexibility to just be available if needed while being at home.  Some staff are confused by our expectation of them performing work this fall versus what they may or may not have been required to do last spring.  It is the understanding that staff work their regular work hours and be available by phone and email during normal work hours. 

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Information:

Please help spread the word with your staff: BRYT will be offering an encouraging and voluntary workshop to any district employee on Wednesday, Sept. 9 from 11:00 – 12:00. This is the Webex link for those who would like to participate. Here is a description of this workshop:

Self and Collective Care as a Foundation for Working with Students and Families in 2020-21

The COVID-19 pandemic continues to have an impact on school and district staff members at all levels.  The stress associated with seemingly unending changes, uninvited endings, and evolving expectations about new ways of doing things can feel overwhelming. Factor in the concerns about the well-being of students, their families, our own families, and each other, and levels of stress become an even more serious concern. With this understanding, and grounded in the knowledge that we can’t help others if we’re not okay, this session puts forth a shared responsibility framework for systemic approaches to taking care of ourselves/each other and a set of practical considerations and strategies for self and collective care as we work our way through the school year ahead.

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Please be sure to READ the Supervisors Guidelines to guide your work with staff in your schools.

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Here are a couple of items regarding student attendance: In CDL schedule, teachers will be able to override the PV code with a NPV code.  At 11:00 am the auto-dialer will place calls to parents for the previous day’s NPV absences for all schools., therefore a day’s attendance must be completed by 10:00 the following morning. A student is considered present if any of the following occur:

○  Participating in a video class; 
○  Communication from the student to the teacher via chat, text message or email 
○  A phone call with the student, or, for younger students, with the parent;
○  Posting completed coursework to a learning management system or web-based platform or via email; or
○  Turning in completed coursework on a given day.

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Meal Service will start September 14^th it will be  grab and go from 11:30a-12:45p breakfast and lunch, all kids 18 and under qualify for meals at no cost and meals can be picked up from any of the following SITES regardless of attendance area.

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Metrics: Skip created this little graphic to help us read and track the metrics. Thanks, Skip! We are getting close to k-3 going hybrid. If the metrics get to 10/100,000 we will be talking about 4-12 hybrid.

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Hot Spot info from Ben: You will be receiving a set of hotspots that can be supplied to your families that are in need of some help with connectivity. The number you receive is based on the feedback from families in the district-wide survey this summer. We will work to continue to get you more hotspots as family/student needs are identified. John Aubry and Amy Stafford will be helping to coordinate this effort. Here are a few things to keep in mind:

1. We have a limited supply of these hotspots. Please try to ensure we are only providing one per household. A device can support up to 14 simultaneous connections. Asking if a family has received a hotspot from another school would be helpful.
2. There will be some paperwork to fill out for usage, agreements and helping us with inventory.
3. This is a connection to the internet. If a student uses a Bend-La Pine device on the hotspot, it will be filtered just like at school. If a non-Bend La Pine device is connected, it will have full internet (unfiltered) access.

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From Ben Hansen: Breakouts, and other new features, are live in our WebEx TEST site! Please invite anyone you like to try out the new features. 

Keep in mind this is still test/pre-release, so Cisco may continue to update and change things.  I noticed a few functionality changes that may change how things work by default, but that is why we play with this stuff in the test.  I noticed that by default when I used my personal room it put attendees in a lobby and I needed to admit then to the room.  I assume this is a setting somewhere and could be useful in some scenarios.  

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ZOOM App for juniors and seniors: In communicating with our school to career team members, we are learning that most colleges, trade schools, businesses, and community organizations use Zoom to set up virtual admission meetings, workshops, internships, and other opportunities for our soon to be graduates. To ensure our juniors and seniors can take advantage of these experiences, our IT team pushed out Zoom to their iPads this week. These students are now able to download the Zoom app onto their iPads.

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Bend-La Pine’s LEAD Cohort is finalizing a clearinghouse of resources to support all teachers in guiding classroom conversations about anti-racism and equity.  In accordance with the school board and leadership guidance, we want teachers to be brave, proactive, thoughtful and supported in engaging in these conversations–it is not a question of if we should address the current events of our community and country, but how we approach that dialogue, that we are seeking to support.  
The clearinghouse of resources for teachers will be published soon.  At that point, LEAD Cohort members will begin piloting and demonstrating the use of the materials, for collective reflection and learning.  A meeting with you as building administrators will take place before implementation begins.  
Can you please give your LEAD Cohort representative 10 minutes at a staff meeting to give context for the resources and to invite others to join in trying them out collaboratively?  The list of cohort members is HERE (pretty great group!).  If you don’t have a staff member from your building on this team, one of the current members is happy to join your staff meeting as a guest and share the information.  Please reach out to Kinsey if you have any questions at this point! 

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We are excited to launch our third year of Spanish for employees! Bend-La Pine Schools is pleased to offer weekly Spanish classes for employees once again this school year. These classes are designed to provide skills that can be used to carry out educational and administrative tasks and aid in practical communication with our Spanish speaking students, parents, friends, and neighbors. Here is more information about the classes and how to register.

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OSAA Athletics Update: Additionally, we are including athletics under the Season 1 proposal in that Phase I group. So teams are good to begin on the 28^th. Thank you to Dave Williams, our District Athletic Director, and all the middle and high school Athletic Director’s for their thoughtful advocacy and detailed proposals.

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iPad Repair note from IT: Swapping out iPads for repair should look similar, if not even better to what was being done in the spring. Parents and/or students should contact the school or their Tier 1 and schedule for a replacement to be picked up at the school and the damaged iPad to be left with the school. The damaged iPad should be sent to IT.

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Canvas Parent Information Night! Our Instructional Tech Team will host a “How to Navigate Canvas” parent information night September 23. We have scheduled back to back WebEx demos/Q and A’s for Spanish and English speaking parents to learn about Canvas and how they can support their students!

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Instructional Support: We had such a successful class this summer that we have decided to offer our differentiated instruction course again this coming fall. We have added this course offering to Performance Matters? The class will be presented online through Canvas and WebEx. The class will require approximately 3.5 hours of work per week, for 3 weeks (all digital). Here is the information:

Look for:   Meeting the Needs of All Students: Differentiation is the Key

Description: This course will support you in providing differentiated instruction both in virtual and face-to-face classroom settings. As a result of this class, you will come away with a better understanding of what differentiated instruction is and you will have created a differentiated instruction lesson you will be able to implement directly into your classroom this year. This course is run completely through Canvas, with a group share on the last day of the course (Friday, December 4th).
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A note from our Instructional Coach Team: Synergy started syncing to Canvas this week.  Overall, this is a good thing because teachers can start building their courses directly into their shells that will eventually have students and be used for instruction.  This is HUGE for our users and gives them some peace of mind in that they are finally able to start building their “real” courses. That said, our team discovered a complication.  This sync allows students who are somewhat Canvas literate to see their current schedules for the year.  In some cases, these schedules might change a lot, so the fact that students are seeing them has caused some angst this week.  We apologize for this.  Fixing the issue at this point might come at the cost of teachers being prepared for the first day or even losing content they have been building   What’s the lesser bad? Please know that our team will continue to try to resolve this problem.

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Self Care – A big thanks to Jim for organizing the presentation from BRYT. Take care of yourself and model taking care of yourself. Think about what you are going to do with your staff to demonstrate your concern for them and how are you going to communicate to them the importance taking care of yourself?

Calendar:

HS Admininstrator WebEx: Thursday, Sept 17 at 8:00am

TO DO:

Look for an 18 min. COVID-19 Training video created by our district nurses to be released early next week. We would like this video to be a district required training. Everyone should view it before September 11. Staff who have concerns about returning to work may want to watch it prior to coming into the building.

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Leadership PD Opportunity with BRYT: You are invited/encouraged to attend the following one-hour workshop next Friday, Sept. 4, from 10:00 – 11:00am. It will be presented by Courtney Tucker, from the Brookline Center in Boston, MA. Courtney works specifically with a school-based program called BRYT, that we are contracting with this year. The description of the workshop and URL for joining this meeting are below. It promises to be an hour well worth your time.

 Self and Collective Care as a Foundation for Transitional Leadership 

The stress associated with seemingly unending changes, uninvited endings, and evolving expectations about new ways of doing things can feel overwhelming. Factor in the concerns about the well-being of staff, students, their families, our own families, and each other, and levels of stress become an even more serious concern. With this understanding, and grounded in the knowledge of transition leadership, this session puts forth a shared responsibility framework for systemic approaches and practical considerations for taking care of ourselves as leaders and then shifting to the facilitation of collective care for the staff you work with. 

Please add this Zoom link to your calendar. This BRYT-sponsored workshop will occur next Friday (9/4) from 10:00 – 11:00. Here is a description of what you’ll be engaged in:

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Important information from Paul Dean related to Return to School (RTS)

Welcoming Staff Back Into Buildings – August 28

Attendance Information (Draft) – August 28

Staff Contract Tracing (reminder that this needs to be in place by Tuesday, September 1) – Aug 28

Staff Trainings (August 28)

Our school nurses are preparing video trainings on the following topics:

1. COVID-19 Training Presentation
   Working with a group of nurses from our school nursing team, develop a voice recorded presentation using the slides from the Oregon School Nurses Association COVID-19 Tool Kit. Included in the presentation would be:
   1. COVID-19 facts (as we know now)
   2. Importance of social distancing, masking, washing hands
   3. Signs and symptoms to look for/when should staff stay home
      1. visual screening procedures for students and staff 
   4. Process for what to do if a staff/student becomes ill during school
      1. isolation room information
2. BLP Cleaning Policy/Procedures
   Additionally, I think it would be beneficial to work with Walt Norris and Terry Cashman to develop a slide presentation specific to our district cleaning policies and procedures. 
   1. Cleaning/disinfecting agents the district is using
   2. How/what to clean
3. Personal Protective Equipment (for select staff)
   1. When to use
   2. Donning and Doffing procedure

We will notify you how to access them and will ask you to share them with staff for immediate viewing.

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Please share this with your teachers about recording lessons: During Comprehensive Distance Learning, some teachers may elect to record lessons on Canvas. After consulting with legal counsel, student voice, student image, and student name are ALLOWED to be recorded and uploaded/shared within your Canvas classroom. So you may, if you choose, record the first lesson launch you deliver live (in Webex), save that recording to your desktop, and then upload to your Canvas classroom. Keep in mind that recordings on Webex can not be viewed for 24 hours.

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Some questions have come up regarding iPad insurance. Parents can still pay for iPad insurance this year. Please refer them to this district site for more information. (You might want to include this in future parent communication.)

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You recently received (or soon will!) an email from Alandra with a list of suggested topics to cover with your families in your regular communication channels. You will likely receive a similar email from Alandra every week, for the next handful of weeks. In an effort to coordinate communication coming from your school and the district, please make sure you have disseminated the topics (in your next family communication) that Alandra is suggesting, as you receive them.

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Following is a clarification of the workdays for your classified EA positions prior to Sept. 14. During the week of Sept. 1 – 4, all classified (who aren’t on the clock yet) have one day of work to report in for – at your discretion. During the week of Sept. 7 – 11, your classified EA (those who haven’t reported to work yet) folks have three days of work – specifically Wednesday – Friday.

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Here is the protocol to follow if a staff member feels ill after entering a school site. They are to isolate themselves within the building and immediately call their supervisor.
The supervisor will text Tami Pike, Health Services Supervisor, at 541-350-8387 with the following information:
This is [insert your name] and I have a staff member feeling ill.   Please call me.  The staff member can be reached at [insert phone number].
Tami will call you and advise you and the staff member’s next steps. Please share this protocol with your staff.

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The following is from Dana regarding FAN advocates, whom she also emailed with this same info:

Here are some general guidelines.  These are in the process of being finalized but in general are the parameters of working from home.  
FAN Advocates will have the option to work at their site or at home, with these caveats:

• Advocates are expected to be working and available during workdays and during work hours. 
• Principals may require staff to report to the building for a variety of reasons with 24-hour notice: team planning, trainings, to meet clients, etc. 
• If an administrator has concerns about a staff member needing more support, that staff member will be expected to report to the building during working hours. When working at a site, proper safety measures such as wearing a mask, physical distancing, washing hands, and limiting teams to small groups will be expected. 
• Confidentiality needs to be maintained during work hours.  Unless a FAN Advocate can secure a location in a room adjacent to the FAN office, Advocate children will not be able to come to school.  

Please reach out to Dana any time if you want to discuss these expectations.  As a reminder, these provisions are for CDL only.  New expectations for working during the Hybrid learning option will be shared at a later date.

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Dave Williams has been working with our HS and MS AD’s to coordinate a plan for athletics this fall: Below is the statement we are making related to this fall athletics. 

High School Summer athletic workouts will continue through September 11.  Beginning Monday, August 31^st all athletes will be required to register for their sport on Family id and have a current physical on file at their school.  There will no pay to play fees for season 1! 

The Bend LaPine Schools athletic programs will pause from September 12 through September 27 for the successful start to comprehensive distance learning.  We are tentatively planning a September 28 OSAA season 1 starts based on returning to limited in-person instruction.  A firm decision on opening season 1 will be made on September 3^rd.   

Middle school athletics will not be offered in season 1 and we will be working with community partners in the hope of having expanded opportunities for middle school students.  The tentative start date for middle school athletics will be with boys park and recreation basketball in early November.   

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Here is an important note from Human Resources: A quick reminder that new hires should not be working before they are cleared. We have been working very hard, but the drug and background check is out of our control. Please let new hires know that they can’t attend Monday’s New Teacher Day unless they are cleared. New teachers will have the opportunity to watch the videos at a later time as they will be recorded. If the new hires watch the videos later that they will still get the $100. Each teacher who has been CLEARED by HR to begin work, has a welcome basket coming to them! Please have one of your staff (or you) pick up this basket from Steph Bent’s office by 12:00 on Monday.

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Notes from Amy Tarnow in the Teaching and Learning Center:

Bend-La Pine Online Student Success Monitors (OSSM’s):  I will be meeting with this team on Wednesday, September 2nd, in the morning.  My expectation after that point is that they will start to enroll students from your schools who have requested supplementary online classes as part of their schedules for comprehensive distance learning.  If you or your counseling staff have a list of students who need to be enrolled, please be sure to pass that on to your OSSM so they can get everyone into the classes they need with a start date of 9/14.  With regard to schedules, it is my expectation that these staff will interact with and support students remotely during CDL, much the same as they would in a lab by monitoring progress, reaching out to individuals and families, answering questions and completing additional enrollments and drops as requested.  I anticipate they will have more than enough to fill their 6-hour work days.  If you have any specific schedule requirements for the OSSM at your site, please let me know.  Additionally, let me know if you expect these individuals to be at your site on any specific days or times.  I support your needs, and short of more information will endorse their working remotely during CDL.
Canvas Toolkit for Schools:  Our team is developing a “toolkit” of basic resources pertaining to Canvas for you to use!  Included in this folder will be letter templates you can modify for students, families, and support staff.  It will include a flowchart of support resources and the best way to access them and additional information about our Canvas landing page.   It will also include information about accessing the content modules created by district staff over the summer.  Additionally, our team has developed a “Canvas Ready” module that will teach students how to use and navigate the Canvas system.  We will include directions on how to access it and suggestions about the implementation of this module as part of the toolkit.  For your planning, this ready-made module can be inserted into any Canvas course.  You’ll want to think of a way to get it to every student once as opposed to having all teachers insert it in their classes!  More information and suggestions about it will come in the toolkit.  We are working as quickly as possible to get all of these parts in place and will get you a link to the folder by the end of next week.
Canvas Landing Page:  Our Canvas landing page is designed to be a one-stop-shop for parents, students, teachers, and staff to access support resources and a login portal for the Canvas LMS.  It is currently linked to all secondary “students” pages in the bottom block of the page.  We will be making more prominent links and advertising the landing page once it is completed.  As of writing this note our updates are in line to be posted, “inline” being the key phrase.  Please continue to check the page for updates and refer students and staff there for information when you are asked, please do not send it publicly in newsletters at this time.  We will let you know when it is ready for large-scale release. 
Chrome Browser: All 9-12 students now have access to download the Chrome browser through Self Service.  We have found that Chrome offers a superior experience when accessing PEAK Online courses on iPads.  Please let me know if you have any questions about this tool.
EA’s, Support Staff and Canvas:  At this point, only instructional staff with sections attached to them have automatically created Canvas accounts.  We have created Canvas accounts for many of you manually.  If you still need an account, don’t hesitate to reach out via the “account request” link on our Canvas Landing page.  That said, we exploring ways to identify and pull all staff who may need Canvas accounts into our automated process.  In the meantime, we encourage staff who are not sure if they need Canvas accounts to explore the help and video resources on the Canvas Landing Page (especially those pertaining to parents) instead of just requesting an account when they aren’t sure how they will use it.  Many support staff will find that “Observer” accounts are all they need to be able to monitor student progress and help as needed.  A specific playlist of these resources will be part of our “Canvas Toolkit”, described above.  If support staff review the resources for parents and still feel they need more access, they can reach out via the landing page link.  
Growing with Canvas:  Teachers are rocking in this course and our TLC team is doing their best to provide guiding and meaningful feedback to support learning and teacher course creation. After the year starts we will get you a list of staff who have completed GWC and those who have not yet finished.  It will be up to you to determine who didn’t even start,  as we can’t see them!  That said, a new “GWC” course will be launched for new staff as of September 14th, so anyone else who wants or needs to participate can be added to that cohort.  When the time comes, just send names to me. 

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Curriculum for our CTE teachers: Brook and Regine at the HDESD have been hard at work looking out for our CTE teachers. Here are some resources of which they have been apprised : iCEV – accounts should go live next; week2: Oregon Connections powered by Nepris3 and Career Tree coming online in the next two weeks. Feel free to share these resources and point folks to the HDESD website for more information. 

Calendar:

Our next HS Admin WebEx: Thursday, Sept 17 at 8:00am

TO DO:

Valuable digital tools: Take a few minutes to review our district’s Remote Learning Tools web page. This page was in existence last spring – and continues to be updated. Please share this web page multiple times, in a variety of contexts with your teachers as well. The tools suggested in section 3 (Engage Students) of this document demonstrates how teachers can record lesson launches daily in Canvas! This will be a KEY TOOL in ensuring access for ALL students to daily lessons!

We have the opportunity to serve some students under the ODE guidelines for Limited Person Instruction IF we meet the metrics for the county. In the event we are able to do this, we want you to have plans in place approved and ready to go. We would not implement school plans prior to Oct 1. HERE are the guidelines. Be thinking in terms of two tiers: Tier I: students who need IEP evaluations, Life Skills, and students who have NO connectivity (even with a hot spot). For example, students who live in such remote areas that they can’t get internet service. Tier II: May include students in CTE classes. Letting the ODE guidelines inform your design, please create a plan for YOUR school, and be ready to share the with the high school team the week of August 31.

Contact Tracing requirements from Paul: Building leaders, please view this CDL Building Contact Tracing Protocols – Staff to Staff google doc.  Our goal is to get these protocols up and running before Friday, August 28.  Paul is hosting a webex at 2:30 pm on Monday to assist schools who have questions or need assistance.  If the instructions are self-explanatory, you don’t need to attend the webex.  https://bls.webex.com/meet/paul.dean | Paul is also available to answer questions during our HS Principal meeting on Wednesday, 8:00.

I realize you need to begin sharing items between school and home such as distributing yearbooks and iPads and collecting textbooks. We will discuss student pictures at our Monday meeting. Please develop a school plan that meets these guidelines and send it to me. After I approve your plan, you are ready to go!

Start building and/or rethinking your leadership teams for these areas: School Curriculum/Instruction Team; School Culture of Care/SEL Team; Family Connections Team, Return to School Team and School Safety Team*. These School-Based teams align with district teams and our work specific to starting school on September 14. Consider how your classified team members can serve students differently and assign them to these teams, on this google doc, as appropriate. We will talk and share more about the purpose and responsibilities of these teams.

*Here are the guidelines for the school safety teams. Be sure to include your school NURSE in your team meetings.

Please share out the Certified Work Calendar for Back to School with your staff. HERE is the calendar for this year. Note that we added three days, Sept 9 (district training/PD), 10 and 11 (both workdays) to the front of the school year to provide staff extra time for training and preparation. Comprehensive Distance Learning will launch on Monday, Sept 14.

New Teacher Training is Monday, August 31! We are planning a welcome back event for our new teachers to the district that will include a virtual district training in the morning and time with BEA in the afternoon. Your new teachers will receive a welcome letter from HR explaining this. If you hire a teacher next week, send Stephanie their name(s) so we can include them. You do not have a role in this year’s welcome back but you might consider organizing your own school welcome that includes providing some swag!

Information:

We have made a few staffing moves within the TLC team.  You may have seen the announcement of our selection of Juan Cuadros as our Executive Director of Teaching and Learning.  Juan has been an educator in Eugene and brings a strong background of experience as a building leader and teacher.  He will help to lead us in moving towards more culturally competent teaching and equitable learning outcomes and experiences for ALL of our students.  Juan has moved into his office in the TLC department and would appreciate the time to meet and get to know each of you.  Reach out and welcome Juan!

We have also moved Dean Richards and Julie Walker into leadership positions within the TLC department.  Julie will serve as the Assistant Director of Elementary (K-5) Curriculum, Instruction, and Systems.  Dean will serve as the Assistant Director of Secondary (6-12) Curriculum, Instruction, and Systems.  Many of you are aware of the stellar work Julie and Dean have led in our district over the years.  We are thrilled that they will be helping to move our schools forward in these areas.

Here is a new tool that shows county metrics for opening schools to in-person learning. It will be updated every Wednesday. HERE is the timeline for decision making related to moving to Hybrind/Balanced Learning.

WebEx has some fabulous changes coming our way that we are hoping will be in effect Sept 1^st.  The biggest is the addition of breakout rooms.  The instructional tech team will be putting together a list of the changes along with tutorials for them. Stay tuned!

Please read this message on students switching between Bend-La Pine Online and CDL (or hybrid). Ask me any questions you might have then share it with your staff. You and your staff need to know this information so you are better able to counsel students/parents, but also so your staff are aware that they may gain additional students in her/his classes at any point in the year (particularly when we move to hybrid).

Here is the link to the sample HS CDL schedule for our comprehensive high schools (this term refers to BSHS, LPHS, MVHS, and SHS who are all on the same semester schedule). Our choice high schools, BTA@ MHS, Realms, and Skyline , all on trimesters, have also completed their schedules. Principals, if you have not already done so, please customize (school colors and logo) your school’s schedule and post it to your website for parents to view. By the end of next week (August 28), I will ask you to post specific daily schedules and standards of practices (SOP’s) for high schools on your web pages. We will finalize these at our HS meeting on Monday.

The need for translation (and possibly interpretation) is going to kick into high gear here very soon. Translation requests should be requested at least 5 days before it is needed. Remember that communication with families at your school should be sent in both Spanish and English. Please spend a few moments reviewing this Language Access Plan – as well as sharing it again with your staff. The contact for interpreter and translation requests this year is Kelly Marty, our new receptionist at the Education Center. Also, here is a copy of the latest ELL Dept. Newsletter.

An important note from Becky in IT: Back in May we sent out a schedule showing many of the Synergy year end tasks related to ending the 2019-20 year and starting the 2020-21 year.

Things have changed a bit (an understatement, right?).  The dates for the tasks that remain in August and September have been changed.

Below is the new information.  Please share this information with your building staff.  Let me know if you have questions.

New Date	Task description
August 31, 2020	Synergy TeacherVue Grade Book will be synced with student course schedules. NOTE:  If your student class schedules are not set on or by this date, please let your teachers know.  If student class schedules are not set, your teachers will not see class information on September 1, 2020. Beginning August 31, 2020 the Synergy TeacherVue Grade Book sync will run every day picking up additions and changes to classes.
September 1, 2020	Teacher’s Synergy accounts will be turned on (enabled).  On this date teachers will be able to login and see their classes and students.  This includes our elementary, middle, high and SPED teachers.
September 9, 2020	High Schools:  The ATTENDANCE, GRADE, GRADE BOOK and SCHEDULE views in ParentVue/StudentVue will be turned on.   If you would like these views turned on earlier, please submit a helpdesk ticket stating the date you would like.
September 15, 2020	Middle and Elementary Schools:  The ATTENDANCE, GRADE, GRADE BOOK and SCHEDULE (including homeroom assignment) views in ParentVue/StudentVue will be turned on.   If you would like these views turned on earlier, please submit a helpdesk ticket stating the date you would like.

UPS and Fed-Ex deliveries will continue to be delivered to our district warehouse. Any packages coming to your school will be delivered during your normal district mail routes.

Calendar:

Monday, August 24: HS meeting WebEx, 1:30

Wednesday, August 26: HS Meeting, Board Room 8:00

To Do:

As I explained at our meeting on this week, please send these two items to me by next Wednesday:

1. Your plan for how your school team will address the 9-11 grades students earning incompletes for the spring term. You could use the TEMPLATE from ODE or design your own.

2. The number of seniors who have not yet met graduation requirements and the plan to get them completed by August 30.

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If you haven’t already, please send your leave sheet to me by Monday morning. Please include all of June.

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There are numerous opportunities for teachers to develop curriculum and design instruction this summer. Please encourage them to engage! Here are a few:

LEAD: Leading for Equity and Anti-Racist Dialog: Kinsey shared this opportunity with this week in the hopes that some of your teacher leaders may be interested in participating. She plans to reach out to corresponding principals about the candidates we look at selecting, to be sure you agree that the staff member can take on this leadership work and so you’re aware if someone in your building is participating.  When we get to the stage of piloting some of these resources in classrooms, the team will first meet together, to make sure you’re aware of what activities or topics will be addressed in the classroom, what to expect, how to support, etc. Administrators are encouraged to participate in the cohort/work itself, especially if you have a teacher in the cohort.  

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Canvas Training and Module Development: Thank you for sending out the three letters to teachers about Canvas this week. The first letter explained the move to Canvas as our LMS for grades 6-12. The second letter outlined the option for teachers to get paid design modules on Canvas over the summer. And the third letter explained the training component for Canvas . Training will open up for teachers on June 17. This training, which is self-paced, online, and about 7 1/2 hours, is required and will satisfy one of the PD days prior to the week the teachers return in August. Please encourage your teachers to sign up for the Canvas training AND to design a module. Since they are putting courses on Canvas anyway, why not get paid? Here is the most up-to-date 2020-21 work calendar for certified staff.

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This online course with Harvard School of Education on Culturally Responsive Literature Instruction looks fabulous!  We will cover the cost of teachers wanting to participate. Here is the link: https://www.gse.harvard.edu/ppe/program/culturally-responsive-literature-instruction

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Information:

Lora sent this letter to staff after we received the guidance from ODE regarding our fall opening. She plans to send communication several times during the summer. Here is the complete document Ready Schools Safe Learners and the simplified RSSL version that Jim created! Thanks, Jim!

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Here is a follow up from Jon L. regarding Level Review Assessors process email he sent earlier in the week.  The only difference this year is that principals will need to do the recommendation form in Applitrack.  The recommendations are confidential.

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Here are some recommended reads from Christie Boen! Check out this list!