Welcome Back!
Nice job working through your first five day week. You have done such a wonderful job creating a safe predictable routine for students. We have really enjoyed getting into the schools to start the year.
Remember to prioritize thriving as a theme this year. Take time to think about what this means for students, staff, families, and your leadership team.
To Do:
1. Begin planning for Bias Incident student lessons: (From Kinsey)
The Bias Incident student lessons are ready ahead of schedule, and a handful of schools want them to review with teachers this week, so I’m sending now instead of in Friday blogs:
One hallmark of a thriving culture is that everyone knows how to identify, address, and repair harm when it happens in the community. This lesson provides the chance to have that conversation openly as a school community. Thank you for your active leadership in ensuring this is taught consistently across your building prior to Oct 25.
Consider forwarding this email to your ICCL team to support implementation. If you have questions or would like additional support, please reach out to me or any of the Equity Coaches (copied in this message). Thanks!
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24-25 Bias Incident Lessons:
Family Letter. Please hyperlink in the letter the lesson that corresponds to your grade level and send to families several days in advance of teaching the lesson.
Equity Coaches. This team is available to help your staff prepare or rehearse (they can attend your SIW or provide drop-in support before/after school), or co-teach with particular teachers open to partnership.
Required Lessons. This folder has the grade-specific required lesson for 24-25, as well as printable teacher notes for each lesson. This lesson takes about 60 minutes, or two 30-minute advisory periods.
Suggested Wayfinder Sequence. This sheet suggests Wayfinder lessons to create context and dialogue skills on which to anchor the Bias Incident Lesson.
2. Check your staffing when it comes to lunch extra duty: (From Ryan)
State law prohibits Certified employees from relinquishing their duty-free lunch period to take on directed duties in exchange for pay. In other words, employees cannot take on a duty that can only be performed during their lunch period even where voluntary and paid.
As a result, any Certified staff member currently employed as a Lunch Detention Supervisor cannot continue in that role. We understand this may impact your current lunch supervision schedules. Katie and Stephen have already worked with some buildings to construct supervision schedules that do not violate this statute, so please reach out to them for support in adjusting current supervision plans as needed.
Certified staff may elect to perform duties during their lunch hour so long as those duties could be performed at another time. For example, lunch clubs are still permitted to continue, including those with Advisors compensated through an Extra Duty stipend. Any such club meetings, though, cannot be mandated to take place during lunch.
Please let me know if you have any questions or need further clarification.
3. Refer to the CPI Email from Sean: Make sure you have the proper number of staff attending training to ensure we meet the required ratio. Please reach out to him with questions.
4. Remind your ICCLs of 10/1: We will be having our first Admin/ICCL Priority Standards and Grading PD on October 1st. We are working on a location but we will be meeting from 4:15 to 6:15. Note: The new MS TAG ICCLs do NOT need to attend this session.
5. Fill out this survey from the safety team: We are asking all school administrators to complete our safety survey by Monday, September 30th. Please provide as much feedback as possible, so we can provide high quality professional development to your site safety designees and campus monitors. Link here.
FYI
September 18: There will be no Admin PD on the teacher work day SIW 9/18. Please use this time to plan professional development in your building.
Attendance Awareness Month: Governor Tina Kotek signed a proclamation declaring the month of September 2024 as Attendance Awareness Month. She was joined by Oregon Department of Education (ODE) Director Charlene Williams, Senator Suzanne Weber, education advocates, and school district representatives.
ODE has released a Social Media Toolkit, a resource designed to help education leaders, advocates, and community members increase school attendance awareness.
Information from the Departments
From Dave in TLC:
The Oregon Student Heath Survey (SHS) will take place again this fall. SHS is given to all 6th, 8th, and 11th grade students. While we have yet to settle on an exact window for administration, we likely will aim for a roughly 2-week period sometime between late October and November. The survey should take students about 30 minutes to complete, and parents and students can opt-out. For those who have done this before, the process is basically the same as previous years. Schools and districts will receive reports in the spring.
Going forward, SHS will become an annual requirement as is specified in House Bill 2656.
Be on the lookout for more detailed information in the coming weeks and let us know if there are weeks that may be problematic for scheduling the SHS.
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From Lisa:
THIS DOCUMENT, known as the Culture of Safety contact list, is available for our admin teams to know who to access for a variety of things that come up in our district.
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From Sean in Student Services:
Please see the link to view the Student Services Professional Learning Schedule 24-25. This is the PD calendar for all learning specialists, school psychologists, speech pathologists, school counselors, and Student Success staff.
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From Aimee with Deschutes County:
Last Call: Staff Registration for the Sept 24 Sources of Strength Adult Advisor Training
This is the only Sources of Strength Adult Advisor training planned for BLS this year. Make sure any staff who need to be trained this year get registered now for the Sept 24 training. This is a full-day, in-person training located in downtown Bend.
Registration is free, but any sub costs would need to come from your school’s $5,500 Sources of Strength budget. Ask your Public Health Specialist if you have questions about your Sources budget or plans.
This training is required for any adults who will be supporting Sources of Strength Peer Leaders, but it is not limited to just those advising Sources Peer Leaders. This training is also useful for GSA club advisors, or other affinity group advisors, and advisors/teachers supporting student-led advocacy projects related to student health or an inclusive school culture.
Sources of Strength is effective at increasing student belonging, engagement in school, connection to supportive adults in school, likelihood to refer a friend to an adult for help, and acceptance of help from adults.
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From Ryan in HR:
Safe Schools
It has come to our attention that some of you have experienced issues with completing your required courses on the SafeSchools platform. Specifically, some users have successfully completed modules and received a certificate of completion, but these completions are not being recognized in the Schoox system, which informs UKG of your status.
While the exact cause of this issue is still being investigated, we wanted to share some tips that may help you avoid or mitigate these problems:
- Use a Computer: Please avoid completing courses on your phone. Using a desktop or laptop computer can help ensure the platform functions correctly.
- Browser Choice: We recommend using Chrome as a browser when accessing SafeSchools. Other browsers may not be fully compatible with the platform.
- Course Interaction: Avoid pausing or skipping forward in videos. Engage fully with each module and ensure you answer any questions that appear promptly.
- Save Completion Certificates: After finishing a course, please save or screenshot your completion certificate. This will serve as proof of completion if the system does not update automatically.
- If your trainings do not register as completed: complete all of your safe school trainings and email all of the certificates in one email to [email protected] letting us know that they didn’t complete. We will credit your courses on our end.
We understand the inconvenience this may cause and appreciate your patience as we work to resolve the issue. If you encounter any problems, please contact [email protected] for further assistance.
Thank you for your attention to this matter and for your continued commitment to completing your required training on time.
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From Paul in Operations: (Repeat) Over the summer, we updated our community use guidelines. Walt Norris met with all of the custodians to review the expectations regarding access to ES school playgrounds and MS tracks (we are not opening HS tracks at this time). Custodians have been instructed to leave one gate upon for community access in the summer, on weekends and before/after school hours and were encouraged to engage with building leaders about which gate that should be.
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From Lisa: Evaluations (REPEAT)
Here is an updated version of the certified evaluation plan for 24-25. This includes Teacher Librarians. Just a reminder that your Deans should be assigned mini observations and evaluations to complete. Please call if you have questions.
High School Only
Nothing This Week
Middle School Only
TAG Info – Please take a second to fill out this document regarding your TAG support this year.
UpShift – Principals, we will be using our second visit this month to talk UpShift. Please invite all relevant people to our scheduled time.
Calendar
September 18: Teacher Work SIW – NO ADMIN MEETING
September 24: High School Admin Horizontal – 8:00 at Realms
September 26: Middle School Horizontal – 3:00 at Cascade
October 1: Admin/ICCL Session – 4:15 – 6:15 – Location TBD
Where in the World
This week we are highlighting Katie Legace and her Happy Place! The Metolius River is a place of joy and peace for Katie. She has been visiting this area since for over 25 years and loves to camp and hike here, especially in the spring and the fall.
Please email a picture and brief description of you Happy Place to Katie or Stephen!
