CEL November Cohort Update – Our first Principal Cohort work with CEL is coming up on either November 1 or 2 (look here if you forgot which cohort you are in and which day you attend). It is important that you have blocked out this day for your work, as it will be a full day from 8:00-2:30 and you will need to be there the whole time (coffee and treats as well as lunch is included!) There is a quick change, in that cohort 1 will be meeting all day at Bear Creek Elementary and cohort 2 will be meeting all day at La Pine Elementary (give yourself 45 minutes to get to LPE). Thank you to our admin teams and the Bear Creek Bears and La Pine Panthers that we will be getting to visit with that day. They are working hard to be ready for our visit. Questions? Ask Skip or Tammy
From Paul—UKG Update – The current practice for teachers, EAs, media managers, secretaries and office managers is to enter absences into Frontline Absence Management (AESOP) in order to trigger a request for a substitute. When our district transitions to digital time and leave tracking on December 5th, this practice will continue even when a substitute may not be needed. Information entered into Frontline Absence Management (AESOP) will be automatically transferred to UKG’s Time and Leave module thereby eliminating the need to complete an additional entry within UKG.
Please spend some time at a future faculty meeting to review this google doc for essential information about this transition on December 5th, best practices when requesting a sub and a Frontline Absences Management (AESOP) “how to guide”.
Next week, we will provide instructions for digital leave submissions through UKG for other staff members who don’t enter absences into Frontline
From Kinsey–Office of DEI Leadership re: CAFE Program: In-House Bilingual Support – We are thrilled to have our first group of CAFE Program staff members in Bend-La Pine Schools! As a reminder, these bilingual staff are receiving a stipend as trained, qualified linguists who can support occasional translation/interpretation needs in our schools.
Some very important notes about this program:
- These folks do not replace Linguist Link. LL is our primary source for all translation/interpretation requests, and all requests (even most urgent ones) should continue to go through that system.
- CAFE Program services should be used for walk-ins, phone calls, or situations that could not be planned or predicted in advance, and/or for very small/short messages (i.e. needing to add a short addition to your school newsletter that you’d already sent through translation, or sending a quick text/email to a family).
- These staff members are not for translations of emergency situations—those should continue to go through our Communications and Multilingual Depts for support and translation.
- Each CAFE member has a log of hours, to track their time and effort. They will monitor and update supervisors regularly, and have the right to say No to a request if they are unable, uncomfortable, or have maxxed their hours.
- If you don’t have a staff member from your school/dept listed here, you are welcome to contact any of the folks on that list when a need arises. We’ll update the list as additional folks are tested and trained in the future.
Juntos Program Facilitators
Do you have an awesome Spanish-English bilingual staff member who might be interested in serving as a facilitator for Juntos? (Juntos is a family empowerment and student academic/college support workshop for our Latino students, facilitated entirely in Spanish and offered in partnership between Bend-La Pine Schools and OSU-Open Campus.)
Juntos facilitators are paid for their time, and trained as facilitators to lead the 6-week workshops. We are partnering with OSU to help them recruit facilitators: If you have a staff member who might be interested, please invite them to join an informational session with OSU 4:00-4:30pm next Tuesday, Oct 25th using this Zoom link. Thanks!
Bias Incident Reporting
THANK YOU for your leadership in rolling out a very successful district-wide student lesson on bias and bias incident reporting! This was not a perfect lesson or roll-out, but it was a huge step for our system, and your leadership led to a ton of positive feedback from students and families.
Follow-up lessons will come, so this is not a one-and-done conversation.
In the meantime:
- Celebrate with your staff that you accomplished a scary and sensitive thing together!
- If you have any observations or feedback from your perspective, please reach out to Kinsey
- Please ensure the reporting posters are visible in various places throughout your building
- Contact the LEAD TOSAs if you or a team in your building would like to continue partnering on controversial topics and productive dialogue in your classrooms
Multilingual Dept Staff Mini-Observations and Evals
As in prior years, in an effort to partner on monitoring the effectiveness of multilingual programs and services across sites, Office of DEI leadership will continue to support mini-observations for certified staff in those roles (ELL/Title III, Dual Language Immersion).
If you would like to coordinate mini’s more closely, or visit a classroom together to calibrate evaluation conversations with a lens on culturally- or linguistically-accessible practices, please reach out to Kinsey!
Spanish FAFSA Night
Please save the date for a district-wide Spanish-language FAFSA Night (in partnership between Bend-La Pine Schools, COCC, and Juntos) on the evening of Tuesday, November 29th. This applies mainly to our high schools, although Spanish-speaking parents/families or our staff members who are interested in support for pursuing financial aid for college are welcome to attend as well! More details and an invitation will be shared via multilingual programs’ specialists and liaisons.
From Tami Pike re: Drills and AQI – When conducting scheduled fire drills, please be cognizant of the AQI. We’ve had a few fire drills occur where the AQI was in the unhealthy or unhealthy for sensitive groups range. Some staff and students had respiratory reactions to the smoke causing shortness of breath and the need for their rescue medication. My recommendation would be to conduct fire drills when the AQI is good or moderate (Below 100). If you have a drill scheduled and the air quality is above 100, please consider rescheduling the drill.
Office Manager meeting – Please pass on to your office managers that these meetings are required so your assistance in helping them get out of the building to attend is appreciated. Elementary will be 1:15 – 3:15, Secondary will be 2:30 – 4. There will be an overlap of about 30 minutes for the whole K-12 group. The next meeting is Nov 2nd at High Lakes Elementary. We look forward to seeing them there!
Jennifer Hauth–Social Emotional & Mental Well-Being – Check out this awesome short video on teaching students active listening.
The Harmony Meet Up or Buddy Up is an opportunity for students to practice active listening. During your morning meeting consider having specific students share and giving every student a chance to share during the week at meet up on different days. When only a few students share aloud you will have time to have students learn to practice active listening with their classmates. Here are the response prompts from Harmony to help students learn to respond to fellow classmates.
From Sean re: Behavioral Health Tele-Therapy appointment in school – Many of you have had parents request that their student be able to access their behavioral health tele-therapy appointments while at school. Myself, school administrators, legal counsel, and IT have developed a protocol to allow this to happen. Please read carefully and let me know if you have any questions. You can find the procedure HERE. Thank you
Calendar
- Monthly checklist
- 22-23 Dibels Schedule
- Tuesday, Oct 25 – Horizontal 3-4:30 pm at Ensworth
- Saturday, Oct 21 – Padres play Phillies @ 4:37 pm
- Friday, Oct 28 – Game 1 of the World Series
- Monday – Oct 31 Halloween (on a Monday!!!)
- Nov 1 & 2 – CEL cohort
- Nov 11 – no school
- Nov 14 – Principal PD session 3-4:30
- Nov 16 – 1st Educator Network SIW (look for more info soon)
- Nov 21-25 – Thanksgiving break
And Finally…
Looking for something fun to do with your family or on your own this weekend? Step back in time and get lost with the Flintstones in the corn maze at the Smith Rock Ranch!
