Happy last Friday of the school year! This week’s blog was fairly easy to put together. It consists mainly of department updates and reminders. As I communicated last week, we will not have any Horizontal meetings for the remainder of the year. If you have any questions send them my way via email, text, phone call or hold them until our final 1:1 meeting. I hope everyone is hanging in there and that you are wrapping up all those final eval conversations and end of the year tasks. You got this!
Rapid Testing Update – We are no longer required to offer Rapid Testing to symptomatic students and staff at the secondary level due to Deschutes County case rate falling below the 200 cases/100K for the prior two weeks. If a parent requests a Rapid Test when you’ve notified them to come and pick up their symptomatic child, you can certainly give them the test or refer them to their health care provider.
Please do not dispose of unused tests but store them somewhere at your site until we more fully understand what OHA wants us to do with them in August.
Indoor Masking for BLS Employees After June 21 – Please continue to follow indoor masking requirements through June 18. Next week, we will email guidance for indoor masking for June 21st and beyond.
Quarantine Requirements – OHA has pivoted once again and is now allowing the local health authorities to reduce the mandatory 14-day quarantine to a 10 day. Tami Pike is consulting with our friends at Deschutes County Health and will be communicating to administrators and nurses which guideline that we’ll be following.
Information from Jackie Wilson our Sustainability Coordinator – As the school year begins to come to a close, please be aware of the BLS holiday standard operating procedure. This document is meant to help you guide the staff in how to close down at the end of the school year. Please make sure all of the staff has seen this document as we rapidly approach the summer holidays. Thank you for a wonderful school year. We look forward to a healthy 2021-2022 school year.
From HR – If you are considering paying any of your new hires to participate in professional development this summer please review and follow this one-page guidance before doing so. Reach out to Paul in HR if you have any questions regarding this.
Another from HR – Here is a link to a google doc to assist admin/supervisors in how to support probationary classified employees before their probationary period ends so we don’t keep someone in a job when it is not the right fit.
From Scott in IT – All students who have a district-issued hotspot at their home are asked to return the hotspot and charging equipment to the school front office by June 18th. Service to all hotspots will end on June 18th. Any hotspot that has not been returned to school will cease to function beyond this date. Additionally, John Aubry and I (Scott McDonald) have devised a plan for collecting and distributing Hotspots for student use over the summer. You likely received this document last Friday or earlier this week. We are trying to keep it simple, but we certainly know that this exchange will occur at the busiest time in the school year.
From Kevin Milner – Thanks for all of your amazing work to get students enrolled into our summer learning program- Jump Start. We have over 470 students enrolled at present and we could not have done this without you and your school’s efforts.
The next step is to find out about any students you have attending that have specific needs, challenges, or things you’d like staff to know about.
Kevin M. will be keeping track of this information and will pass this along to our Student Services Leads and classroom teachers at each site. If EA support is needed, we will need to know this as well prior to placing support staff.
For this conversation, you can:
- Give me a call (x6511; 503-415-1184)
- Respond via email
- Buy Kevin M. coffee/beverage and tell me all about it!
Thanks again for all of your support.
From Dave VanLoo – Here is a 4-page summary for school administrators that highlights many key ideas from this year’s six horizontal trainings related to advancing excellence and equity through teaching and classroom instructional practice. This may be a helpful, brief recap of the year.
Heads Up – A delivery was made to some of our elementary schools in recent days with a request to distribute books and letters from RPA to 5th grade students. Please do not distribute these materials. Put them aside for RPA to collect back.
Calendar
- 6/14 – NO HORIZONTAL
- 6/16 – normal day length – not an SIW dismissal
- 6/17 – last day of school. SIW dismissal
- 6/21, 22 – Elementary BRYT Summer Kickstart
- 6/21 – @ 4pm In person leadership meeting @ Ed Center (bring a lawn chair) w/a followup meeting @ McMennamins.
- 8/12 – from 8-4 pm – leadership academy for administrators and supervisors, Riverhouse
- 8/17 – Safe and Secure Schools Day – time and location TBD
- 8/25 26 – Innovative Teaching and Learning conference