To Do
From Student Services Leadership
Check-in with Health Teachers, Counselors, Sources of Strength Teams, and School Newsletters – Coordinated Suicide Prevention Efforts in Nov and Dec
We are aiming to coordinate a multi-pronged approach to prevent student suicides over the holiday breaks. Please check-in with these individuals or support your Public Health Specialist to organize a School Health Team meeting to coordinate these efforts.
- Health Teachers – Deliver their suicide prevention lessons and present these Help Resources for Students slides before the holiday breaks, in coordination with their counselors to assure any students with follow up needs are identified, assessed, and connected with help resources before breaks. See the full message here.
- Sources of Strength Peer Leaders (by way of your buildings trained Adult Advisors) – Promote crisis helplines and engage peers in identifying who they can go to for help over breaks and what Strengths they can use to cope with challenges over breaks. See the full message here.
- Counselors – Coordinate with Health teachers so that there’s a clear way to identify, assess, and connect students who need mental health support to help resources. Counselors may need your help to protect their time so that they’re able to follow up with students who need help before holiday breaks.
- School Newsletters – Include two suicide prevention messages in your school newsletters: one in November before break and one in December before break. These messages will also go out in the district Family Spotlight and will be forwarded from your Public Health Specialist to you (or the person you’ve designated to compile your school newsletters) with a request to publish them.
From Departments
From Kinsey – Policy, Advocacy, & Equity:
Post-Election Resources:
As the presidential elections wrap up, we should anticipate and prepare to support the strong reactions, emotions, and conversations our staff, students, and families will experience. As leaders, it is our responsibility to ensure our staff are informed, equipped, and supported regarding 1) the expectations for navigating this significant moment in time in a professional manner, 2) the resources available to them as employees, and 3) the strategies for supporting students through their own processing.
Here is a message for staff—I highly recommended you send this to your staff soon. You are welcome to copy and paste this message verbatim, modify it to reflect your voice/style, or send something else. Just don’t be silent on this topic!
Equity Stance Brochures:
I am going to re-print the brochure versions of our district Equity Stance. (You received one at our August administrator launch.) If you would like some for your school (ICCL team? PTA? A stack for the staff lounge?), please let me know by Nov 8th how many you need.
Holidays:
Here is our policy on religion and holidays in schools. Here is our “Do not schedule” dates document. Here is a team reflection and guidance tool on holidays. Consider reviewing these at an ICCL meeting, and/or sharing with all staff.
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From Becca in Communications:
Did you see the latest Family Spotlight? The newsletter is solely devoted to safety and includes a message from Dr. Cook, resources for safe firearm storage, information about SafeOregon, crisis and care resources, details about our latest safety improvements and more. It can be a go-to resource when families have questions about safety in our district. Bookmark the October 30 Family Spotlight and have it at the ready!
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From Triz delaRosa, our new Director of Human Resources – Workforce Relations:
Here is the updated certified evaluation document for 2024-25
Probationary and temporary certified staff: 6 observations (Goals, 2 formals and 3 minis)
Attached you will find two documents to help you initiate the process with your staff. Staff should be receiving notifications regarding goal setting in UKG. There will be an option for you to review their goals once they have been completed in UKG. You should also be working toward completing one (1) formal observation by the end of November and a second formal observation by end of January (both to be completed in UKG).
Please note that you will also be completing your mini (3) observations throughout the year in UKG.
Contract staff ON & OFF evaluation cycle year: 3 observations
- One goal setting (by December 1)
- Two instructional/non-instructional mini-observations (by May 15)
Contract staff ON evaluation cycle year (in addition to above):
- Self-Evaluation (by May 15)
- Summative Evaluation (by June 15)
There will be additional information coming to you, as we plan to have ongoing instruction on how to complete all the necessary steps timely, and how we can support you in UKG.
Again, I appreciate your grace and patience as we work through the development and refinement of the evaluation process. I know this information is coming out late and creating a crunch, but we are focused on having this information out to you all much sooner next year.
Please let me know if you have any additional questions.
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From Paul in Operations:
Building leaders are to pause any program expansion proposals (academic, athletic and extra duty) that will impact your site/facility until further notice. We are in the process of creating internal procedures that will identify that necessary steps that will need to be taken in order to ensure compliance with regulations (i.e. Title IX, permitting, accounting), district policies, contracts and address departmental impacts.
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From Scott and Kayla in Safety:
Scott and Kayla will be out of town next week, November 4th through November 7th at a conference. We will continue to monitor our emails, cell phones, and text messages to support as best as we can while out of the office. If you have any emergencies that require immediate attention, please reach out to our Chief Operations Officer, Paul Dean for immediate support.
We are happy to announce that we are not staffed at 8 School Resource Officers in the district. Our newest SRO is Officer James Ragland, who will be working out of Pilot Butte Middle School. Please use the updated SRO point of contact roster to see who your current SRO is for your school, and to reach out to any members of the SRO team for support.
Middle School Only
November Meetings: Time to sign up for a November visit. Just one time this month. Please choose a date over the course of the month. FYI: Stephen will be out November 6-8 at a conference. Here is my Calendly link or you can use Outlook directly.
High School Only
Thank you for welcoming our Internship Coordinators, Sarah, who serves LPHS and Renee, who serves our Bend schools, to your building! Please support them in onboarding our juniors and seniors into internship opportunities.
Calendar:
November 5: MS and HS Administrator work session – 8:00-10:00 @ Cascade MS
November 6-8: Katie and Stephen at Synergy Conference
November 7: New Course Proposals Due
November 11: Veterans Day
November 19: HS Assistant Principals work session – 8:00-10:00 @ BTA
November 21: MS Horizontal – 3:00-5:00 @ Pilot Butte MS
November 23-27: Thanksgiving Break
December 10: HS Administrators and Counselors work session – 8:00-10:00 @MVHS
December 23 – January 3: Winter Break
January 3 – Choice Options Schools/Area Change Requests open for 25-26 school year
Where in the World
This week we are highlighting Chris Boyd, Principal at Caldera High School. Chris shared, “while my normal happy place is disappearing in the woods on a remote hike, floating a river, or climbing a local volcano on skis in the snow, dancing with my Central Oregon Stars was so much fun.
My dance crew is near and dear to my heart. Love my dance peeps! We helped raised 107K for the Sparrow Foundation in Central Oregon.” Check out the Fresh Funky Fly Girls and a Boy!