From Student Services: The Nest Program will be relocating to Summit HS next fall
The Nest is a self-contained program (run by the HDESD) for elementary students who experience dysregulation and need a highly specialized environment to develop skills. It is currently housed in a leased building on Twin Knolls Rd. Students attend The Nest for half the day and then go to their neighborhood school for the other half.
The Nest will be expanding next year by adding an additional classroom. Currently, there is only capacity to host 6-8 students per half-day session. This expansion will double the program’s capacity and offer some full-day slots, which are not currently available. The current location in the Tamarack building is not a suitable location for expansion. As a result, the decision was made to relocate The Nest to a BLS facility.
Several sites were considered, and Summit HS was ultimately selected because of the unique features that the site offers. The wing that will host The Nest was originally built for an ECSE kindergarten and has many of the desired features. It is mostly separate from the rest of the building, has the right amount of space, and allows the program to expand to two classrooms. Further, while other elementary schools were considered, experience has shown that locating a self-contained program within an elementary school is not a successful model. The team believes that placing the program at a high school will offer more of a boundary between the program and the school. Moreover, there is a possibility for synergistic programming in the future (think high school mentors) that could benefit both The Nest and Summit HS.
The Nest has its own teachers and administrators and will be administered in an independent manner. There is currently a planning committee that will be engaging with facilities, maintenance, IT and custodial departments to create a summer timeline for this work.
From Paul: Our Core Ops team will discuss The Nest move at our upcoming meeting on May 1.
Mandatory AI training
The mandatory AI training that was announced a few months ago is designed primarily for school building administrators so Ops Leadership members are not required to attend it.
From Ryan in Human Resources:
This note is coming to you a bit later than planned, but please join me in welcoming Sarah Westling to the building. Sarah is serving as our Certified Specialist II, supporting HR tasks and bringing valuable experience from her time in the Eugene 4J HR office. We are thrilled she chose to join us and are grateful for the contributions she’s already making to our team.
If you haven’t already, please stop by the large HR office next time you’re at the Ed Center to introduce yourself and welcome Sarah to BLS.
Certificate of Insurance Reminder – It’s a busy time of year with events and travel, many of which require a Certificate of Insurance (COI) for participation. If an event your staff are planning requires a COI, please share this link and ask that they complete the form as early as possible to ensure that a certificate can be issued: Certificate of Insurance Request Form. Any questions about this form or COIs can be directed to Andrea.
New websites for Bend-La Pine Schools
A team from District Communications and IT have started the process of converting all our websites to a new platform for the 2025-26 school year. We have partnered with Finalsite, a leading provider of websites for schools. We are beginning this month with design for a new District site and will follow that with a new school template. We will work through the spring and summer with the goal of launching the new sites before school begins in September. If we run into issues or need to adjust the timeline, we can continue to use our existing sites as long as needed.
We have been talking about this change for a couple of years now, and we’re excited to be underway. The benefits include greater online security, cost savings, cleaning up and better organizing our web content, improved features for those visiting our sites, better mobile functionality, a much-improved content management system (for web editors), visual appeal, and improved accessibility for people with disabilities.
Starting next week, Scott Maben will begin reaching out to each school admin team to ask you questions about your existing website, your thoughts on your new website, and who will be your primary school website content manager in the 2025-26 school year. We also will share details on project timelines and staff training as we solidify those details.
Feel free to ask questions now or hold them for when we connect in the coming weeks.
From HR: 24/25 Classified Evaluations
Administrators and Supervisors,
Good morning! This email includes important information regarding classified staff evaluations for the 24-25 school year. As a reminder, classified staff are evaluated at least once every two years. You may choose to evaluate staff in consecutive years if there are performance issues needing further attention.
We will still be using UKG, but have made every effort to simplify the classified evaluation process this year and have switched to using paper copies only.
Your list of classified employees will be found under the performance and evaluation tab in UKG.
The link below will take you to detailed instructions, troubleshooting, and FAQ’s:
UKG Evaluation Instructions FAQ
If you need assistance, please contact Stuart Eaton at [email protected]
If you notice any corrections that need to be made to your staff list, please contact the classified specialists – [email protected]
All completed classified evaluation packets are due by June 30, 2025. Evaluations must have the employee and the evaluator (non-digital) signatures to be complete. Incomplete submissions will not be accepted.
Thank you,
Your HR Classified Team
Departments
Custodial/Sustainability
Members of our custodial and maintenance teams attended the OSFMA Conference in Albany. Congrats to new OSFMA president, Anne Birky.
Maintenance managers Rich and Greg bested the custodial leadership team of Walt and Rob in a corn hole match.
Dan and Paul technically won the entire tournament.
Safety
Campus Safety Monitors attend a 16-hour unarmed private security professional training last week. Thanks to Scott and Kayla for organizing this so quickly and to our HS/MS admin for releasing staff to attend it.
Transportation
- Members of our FDO team met with South County Transportation to begin design planning for an expanded staff room, new secure entry and expanded office spaces.
IT
Scott, Karen and Paul attended the CoSN Conference in Seattle. Scott was kicked out of a hotel whiskey bar. He’ll tell you all about it.
Upcoming Events & Links
BEA and OSEA Bargaining Update Website
Tuesday, May 20: Excellence in Education Ceremony
Monday, May 26: Memorial Day holiday
Tuesday, May 27: All-Staff Virtual Meeting with Dr. Cook @3:05 pm and 3:50 pm