Staffing News
As of Friday morning I still had no news on additional staffing. I do have a meeting with Lora and Brad on Monday so possibly after this I’ll know more.
Supply lists
Your supply budgets have been increased by at least $10 per student this year so please do not post or send out supply lists or suggested donation requests. Joanne has also asked our local stores to not post any supply lists. If you happen to run out of discretionary $$ before the end of the year, we can talk about other ways to support you. Also know that math kits and ELA kits are in the works. These are materials that will be sent home to help support CDL. Currently all these materials are either on order or are being ordered. Organizing materials and getting them out to families will be the responsibility of each school.
Distance Learning Standards of Practice….
As I mentioned in our Tuesday meeting, we have teams working on this. On Wednesday you’ll learn more about this work and have the opportunity to see the schedules and teaching expectations the teams created. If you want to reach out to your staff about this work you can steal from the text below to explain what is happening and what they can expect…
This year, our district is working on developing a common elementary school schedule and teaching standards of practice in order to support a more uniform roll-out of Comprehensive Distance Learning. Although we don’t have final materials to share at this point, they will be coming within the next two weeks and we felt that it would be important for teachers to know what they might expect. This work is being informed by community and staff feedback, as well as input from BEA, the school board, and teacher leadership teams. This schedule outlines teaching times as well as teaching expectations and teaching tools that allow our district to align with state guidelines/requirements. Opportunities to learn more about these standards of practice and ask questions about them will be provided shortly after they are released.
Survey to families
Thank you all for sending out your survey to families today. Joanne has created a survey for each of you that you will have access to. In about one week you will need to access those survey results and start determining who did not respond. This is when you can bring in some classified staff to start following up with phone calls. NOTE: When making your follow up phone calls please don’t reach out to your liaison to help with this work. They are already working on other projects to support our Latino families.
WebEx things to know…
- Once we signed a contract with WebEx we then moved off their free version and onto a paid, supported version. For some reason this meant our WebEx address changed so settings need to be adjusted by everyone. Here is a quick video you can send to your staff in an upcoming note on how to change their settings.
- WebEx has some fabulous changes coming our way that we are hoping will be in effect Sept 1st. 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.
- You will probably be scheduling meetings with teachers via WebEx this year. To help you with running these virtual meetings Dean Richards put together some WebEx protocols. You can access it here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HaVtzz3Mstz-UsHPZ6zEbeGeK6MASA3T/view?usp=sharing
Libraries
Our wonderful district librarian Christie Boen has created a document to help you plan for how to best use your libraries and your librarians during distance learning. It’s just a guideline. We realize each school might do things a bit differently. You can access her document here: Libraries During Remote Learning
Re-Opening of School
This information was shared with your office managers earlier this week. I’m not sure you received it, so thought I’d pass it along. It has to do with the re-opening of school. (As you likely already know, your main office should be open beginning on Monday – ready to assist those who come to your building). Mask up!
Heads up…
As we head into the school year we are going to ask each school to have the following committees:
- CDL Team – School Curriculum/Instruction Team
- Culture of Care/SEL District – School
- Family Connections District – School
- Return to School Buildings Hybrid (Safety) – School
These building committees will be linked district work teams which in turn are linked to the ODE Blueprint Domains. You need to just start thinking about these teams and what building leaders you’ll tap to lead a committee. In reality, you may already have committees that are similar to these. There is nothing to do right now. Don’t send invites or start appointing leaders. More info on these committees is forthcoming. I just wanted you to have a heads up that each school will be required to have these committees.
iPads and k-2
John Craft has invited the teachers who worked on the distance learning standards of practice to attend a meeting on k-2 iPads. Since these teachers were involved in identifying teacher moves and tools to use, they will be a valuable resource for John to have a discussion with re: what type of training and resources need to be put together. We still do not have an ETA on iPad arrival. I will try to get that info to you as soon as I get it. If it doesn’t appear iPads will arrive before the first day of school teachers will need to know this asap so they can plan accordingly. We are moving as fast as we can.
Schedule for Decisions on Returning to School Steps (comprehensive distance learning, balanced/hybrid, “all in”)
Although we must always leave room for flexibility and changes due to the rapidly changing nature of our understanding of this virus and its impact on schools, below is the chart we’ve created for district decisions:
| Dates of 6-week terms | Dates to Monitor Metrics | Announcement Dates |
| Sept 14-Oct 23 | Friday, Oct 9 | Monday, Oct 12 |
| Oct 26-Dec 11(Thanksgiving break Nov 23-27) | Friday, Nov 20 | Monday, Nov 23 |
| Dec 14-Feb 5 | Friday, Jan 22 | Monday, Jan 25 |
| Feb 8-March 19 (spring break March 22-26) | Friday, March 5 | Monday, March 8 |
| March 29-May 7 | Friday, April 23 | Monday, April 26 |
| May 10-June 17 |
Square Footage update
See attached spreadsheet
Things to do…
Since these are not normal times, many of us (including me) are wondering what to do. You can’t do what you normally do or you hesitate to do something that will be wasted because of a new announcement from the governor. So in case you find yourself in this situation here are a few suggestions from your colleagues:
- Make individual contact with as many staff members as possible via phone or as they drop by the building.
- Work with the head custodian to determine areas of the building that are off limits (such as student bathrooms) in order to reduce the number of spaces needing daily cleaning
- Identify some classified staff that can help contact families and complete the Friday survey
- Get a clear idea of what each of your students will be doing for school (CDL, on line, private, etc.)
- Take a few things from the FAQ and communicate them to staff each week
- Start thinking about your return to school week – how will you configure teachers, groups, face to face…. What are your initial meeting topics?
- Work on the Canvas course
- Read the CDL document from ODE
- Review your calendar from last year and make a monthly to-do list of events
Upcoming…
- Aug 14 – surveys to families sent
- Aug 18 – Horizontal Meeting 8:30, 12:30, 1:45
- Aug 19 – Leadership, Cascade MS 8:30 – 12:30
- Aug 19 – Staff reopening virtual meeting 1:30 – 2:30pm – look for an invite from Lora
- Aug 19 – Parent virtual town hall 4-5 pm
- Aug 21 – access your survey results and plan follow-up phone calls
Finally…
I dare you to make your own version of this – https://youtu.be/oeAN8Xxz0q4
Have a great weekend!