Elementary Admins – I just want to thank you for everything you are doing to keep things moving forward. I know that at times I haven’t given you the most defined directions or the most specific information. But your professional judgment and experience has eased my mind and made me feel better about not communicating to the level I’d like. So, thank you. Additionally, I apologize for sending some random emails this past week and I apologize for the random emails that I will send next week. I’ll do my best to save messages and info for the blog but sometimes it just can’t happen.
Now for the weekly fire hose of information..
Childcare at your building – I know this has caused some angst for some and I understand this. It is a bit confusing for our public to see us hosting childcare but not having school. But having these programs in our school is really fulfilling a need for our parents. Over 50% of the participants are needing a scholarship. These families need our help and these kids need our support. CDL is placing a burden on them that they don’t know how to overcome. The childcare program is relieving some of that stress. So, I would hope that we will open our building to them and make them feel welcome. If you haven’t identified your location and support staff please get that done ASAP. Click here to fill in the information for your building.
Recording Lessons – During Comprehensive Distance Learning, some teachers may elect to record lessons. After consulting with legal counsel, student voice, student image, and student name are ALLOWED to be recorded and uploaded/shared within your Google classroom or Seesaw classroom. So you may, if you choose, record the first lesson launch you deliver live (in Webex), save that recording to your desktop then upload it to Google Classroom or Seesaw. Keep in mind that recordings on Webex can not be viewed for 24 hours.
Outdoor School – Outdoor school is going to happen (virtually). Charlie and his team have planned a Fall group of schools and a Spring group of schools. Currently here are the schools that are scheduled for the Fall:
- Juniper
- Miller
- Buckingham
- Pine Ridge
- Silver Rail
- La Pine
- Westside Village
Attendance – if you have questions about attendance please refer to the documents I had in last week’s blog. These are live documents so a new information arrives or changes it will be included. In nutshell, students will be automatically considered “present virtually” unless a teacher goes in and changes that. Again, refer to that document
ELA Kits are arriving in your buildings this afternoon!! All kits are missing whiteboards. They are arriving Tuesday and we will get them out to buildings. Some kits are missing dry erase pens, as well. We will send these with the whiteboards. We will work hard to get everything to you by Wednesday. We apologize for the delay and thank you for being so patient and flexible.
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. A few things to keep in mind.
- 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.
- There will be some paperwork to fill out for usage, agreements and helping us with inventory.
- 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.
Thanks for your help with this, and we will get these hotspots to you ASAP
LEAD Cohort Update – 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 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 can be found 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!
COVID and Safety related info…
From Debbie Watkins – We have distributed the telework agreement you may choose to enter into with your classified staff. Please read the 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.
Metrics – I created this little graphic to help us read and track the metrics. We are getting close to k-3 going hybrid. If I hear anything I will let you know as soon as I possible can.
From our Excellent District Nurse – Many thanks to Tami Pike and her nursing staff for creating a twenty minute Covid training video – click here to access the directions. We are requiring all staff to complete this training (along with the google acknowledgement form) prior to September 11th but encourage you to do it sooner if possible.
Mask guidelines in Shared Office Spaces – We’ve been trying to reconcile the different masking requirements offered by OHA (in their August 13 update) and ODE In their Ready Schools, Safe Learners (RSSL) document with regard to staff who share work spaces 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 RSSL 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, must 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.
Otter and Cedar from Camp Tamarack will be reaching out to teachers to coordinate the exact dates and details. Additionally, kits from Charlie and his team are being delivered to schools. Please include these with your materials distribution. Additionally, they are putting together an outdoor school focused SEL training that your 5th grade teachers might helpful. More details on that later. A big thanks from Camp Tamarack for your continued support.
School Safety Team & In-Person Education Requirements – this is long one and an important one read carefully…
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 of the COVID-19 checklist.
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.
- We will start LIPI on September 28th
- 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.
—
| Activities | When start | Metrics | |
| Phase 1 | Evaluations (SPED/ELL) and students with zero connectectivity | 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 underserved) | 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 28th, 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 AcknowledgementSchool check-in form includes an option for a staff member to decline acknowledgement 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 work spaces 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 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.
This and That…
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 of taking care of themselves.
Something to read – “Is all chaos bad? It probably depends on how we define chaos and how we as leaders respond to it.” Here is a blog post I came across that talks about leadership in a time of chaos – gee does that sound like something we’re experiencing right now?
Check out this creative piece of work from Tammy and Stephanie. Even I couldn’t have made this video. Nice work Silver Rail!
Have a great weekend and holiday. If you need anything or have any questions text or call my cell or send an email. I will be around all weekend.