WELCOME
Hello all. I am very excited to step in this space and get to work along side all of you this year. I mentioned to some of you that Katie and I were talking about combining our blogs into one secondary blog, but it may take a few weeks to get there. In the mean time, the middle school blog will be titled “The Balcony” in reference to Leadership on the Line: Staying Alive Through the Dangers of Change by Ronald Heifetz and Marty Linsky. In the book, Heifetz and Linsky talk about a leaders need to regularly step away from the workplace day to day and head up to “the balcony” to observe the greater system. Only then can we implement lasting change. This reminder to take a birds-eye view of our buildings/systems has stuck with me throughout my leadership experience. I hope you can find a moment each day to get off “the dance floor” and take in the view from the balcony. If this idea resonates with you, Forbes has a brief synopsis of the chapter you can read here.
To Dos
1. Strategic Initiatives: Please use our strategic initiatives visual during your inservice week and throughout the year to ground our work with staff.
2. PD Structure and Feedback: Also, please remember to use the theme of thriving throughout the year. A big piece of this is how we conduct our professional development. An ask of you is to make sure you use the three signature practices for adults when leading our staff. Additionally, we are asking you to collect feedback from staff after you conduct professional development. Here is the beta form we will use until there is a better collection tool.
3. Admin PD: We are looking to provide small bites of PD opportunities for our leaders in Bend-La Pine in an ongoing way throughout the year. We would like your feedback on topics and format. Here is a short survey we would like administrators to complete. Lisa will close feedback on Tuesday evening (act quickly!) so she can begin to build a calendar and connect with presenters.
4. Upshift Roles: Please take time to fill out this document listing your building’s Upshift roles. This needs to be complete by 8/31. Let Heather Tang or myself know if you have any questions.
5. Part Time Schedules: Ensure you have written schedules down to the minute for your part time staff and share them with me. You can reference the document from Paul Dean if you need some formatting ideas. The key is you need to use YOUR actual schedule, not the example when it comes to what we share. In Pauls example, for instance, he uses 32 minute periods on Wednesdays and I know many of you have 37 minute classes. Here is an example of this communication from Julie at Sky View. If you have any questions about what this should look like, please let me know.
6. New Synergy Gradebook: As you may remember, we have transitioned to the newest version of the Synergy Gradebook this year. Consider it like a software update for your phone. The functionality remains mostly the same but there are some new bells and whistles and they may have moved where you find something. Laura Clark has put together a slideshow for staff that shouldn’t take too long. Please find a way to go over this with teachers. Leaning on a staff member who gets tech may be a good approach.
7. BEA Meetings: Please consider scheduling monthly meetings with your BEA reps this year if you do not already do so. With a new contract, there will likely be more questions and issues that come up on a regular basis. Having a scheduled time to talk with building reps can go a long way to finding collaborative solutions.
8. Phone Coverage: As you know we are entering the really busy time where families are reaching out for the school year. Please make sure that you have your phones covered during work hours and that you are getting back to families that leave messages.
FYI
Change to Horizontal Schedule: As you know, we just rolled over the existing calendar Juan created before he left. However, in talking with Katie and in the spirit of collaboration with our high school partners, we are going to make some tweaks. I am going to remove a few of our existing meetings and replace them with four joint MS/HS meetings. Removed: 9/12, 1/16, 4/6. New joint secondary meetings (all will be from 8-9:30 on Tuesdays): 9/10 (Principals only), 11/5, 1/14, 4/8. I understand this is an adjustment in times and you may have existing meetings scheduled these mornings. We will be flexible with who attends these joint sessions, but we would like at least one rep from each site.
School Facilities: As you heard from Scott Maben, we are looking to open our grounds to the public again. Here is some language around this that was shared back in the spring.
Important Docs:
Here is the BEA CBA.
Here is the OSEA CBA. This is currently an internal document. Please do not distribute.
Lunch Coverage: Circling back on this ask from you. I’ve double checked and certified staff CANNOT be paid to give up their duty-free 30 minute lunch (even if they want to). You must say no to this. It is not in the CBA because it actually comes from the State. However, we can compensate classified employees if we come to an agreement with them around this time. Also note, that for THIS YEAR, counselors CAN be assigned up to one hour of duty a day. However, we must compensate them for anything over the 50 minutes a week that is already in the CBA. Other specialists can also agree to this same time, but it cannot be assigned. It has also been brought up that there was a fund to support this last spring. However, I have not been able to confirm this fund exists again this year so stay tuned.
Conferences: Conferences this year occur on Halloween, which could lead to some tricky scheduling. I’ve met with Sarah and there is agreement that conferencing on the night of 10/31 isn’t a preferred option. Therefore, we are going to match the elementary plan for this year. Wednesday 10/23 – Teacher work SIW, Tuesday 10/29 – Conferences after school (4 hours). Wednesday 10/30 – teacher work day followed by evening conferences, Thursday 10/31 – conferences all day (no evening conferences), Friday 11/1 – Non work day.
Resources on The Balcony (or in our joint blog): We plan to build out a number of tabs in the coming days/weeks to ensure you have a spot to find all the relevant information you need.
FYI From Other Departments
From Kinsey/Policy, Advocacy, and Equity
Upcoming dates to note:
Rosh Hashanah is coming up (evening of Wed Oct 2 to evening of Fri Oct 4—learn more here). Please check your school calendar and do not schedule Curriculum Night or other special student/family events during those evenings.
More dates to come, just wanted to get you this one now since it’s coming up fast. Thank you for your commitment to the dignity and belonging of all our families!
2024 Elections:
I would encourage you to plug this topic into an SIW or staff meeting early in the fall:
Here is our policy around staff engaging in political activities. Teachers should know they may not “promote or oppose the nomination or election of a candidate,” and if they engage in discussion on an election topic they must “consider all candidates for a particular office or any side of a particular political or civil issue.”
Conversations about the election will come up this fall, whether through planned lessons or unplanned student dialogue. Teachers should prepare for either situation. Here are 10 steps for teachers to prepare, navigate, and respond to sensitive discourse.
Additionally, here and here are two great resources for teaching about the election and online news sources. Our district Equity Coaches can support teachers with these conversations—just reach out.
From Dean/Secondary Curriculum, Instructions, and Systems
Teaching and Learning has been hard at work all summer purchasing and deploying curriculum. This spring we received over 2300 individual requests for instructional tools from staff. Our explicit goal is to have all of the tools deployed by the first day that teachers have returned. I also want to have a plan for any instructional tools that do not meet that timeline.
One of the difficulties of some many digital curricular tools is that TLC does not know when an instructional tool is not fully deployed. There are also instances when a tool is deployed, but the teacher is unaware of how to access it. I want to share a few ways to help us understand when a staff member does not have what they need to complete their work.
One way to check to see if a tool has been deployed is the Instructional Tools Website. This site displays which tools have been explicitly deployed for the section. This site may not show all of instructional tools available to a teacher. Many of our digital instructional tools are deployed by section, rather than by teacher.
The other tool I want to share is new this year. This spreadsheet (which may be shared with other staff including office managers or other people appropriate at your building) is a place that TLC an monitor tools that teachers do not yet have access to for their class. We created this system so that we will not miss individual emails that come in from Teacher/Librarians, Administrators, teachers, or other staff members. We will be closely monitoring this spreadsheet beginning August 27th.
Unfulfilled Curriculum Requests
Please contact Dean with any questions
Upcoming Schedule
Inservice Week Certified work calendar for the week of August 26.
August 19: Training: Managing Performance–Investigations, 12:30-4:30
August 19: BLS SIRC & STAS Administrator Refresher Training 8:30-12:30 @ Ed Center: Board Room – this is for administrators who have already had the full training. Administrators who have not yet been trained should register for a training with Misty Groom
August 26: New Teacher training–all admin attend! Time/place TBD (it will be first thing in the morning)
August 27: District Welcome Back! An interactive whole school event. 8:30-10:00
August 28: District Training Day – Building led in am; District led in pm. Your Counselors, Student Success Coordinators and Instructors and Special Education Teachers will be in trainings at Caldera HS. You will mostly have classroom teachers in your building.
Where in the World
I plan to add a photo at the end of each blog. I would love for you all to send me a scenic photo of a place important to you with a short description on why you love that spot. I’ll start us off. This photo was taken in La Quinta, CA (Palm Springs area) and it’s where we go most spring breaks to recharge and get out of the cold Central Oregon winters. For me, the sun, the desert and palm trees allow me to fully relax.
