To Do
From Lisa in the Superintendent’s Office (repeat):
Consider applying to be on the district’s administrator advisory team. See this week’s Staff Spotlight for more specific information. The deadline is October 16.
From Jennifer in Student Services: Jennifer has created goal setting documents for School Counselors and Student Success Certified staff to be used as part of the evaluation process. These documents have been shared with staff and district coaches will use PLC time this month to support certified staff in the usage of these goal setting documents. Staff can save this document as a PDF and uploaded it directly to UKG. We will set aside time at our next PLC to review and begin work on these documents.
School Counselor: One document for each goal:
TIER 1 BLS School Counseling SMARTIE GOALS for 2024-25
Tier 2 BLS School Counseling SMARTIE GOALS for 2024-25
Student Success Goal Setting Document
Reminders/Action items:
From Sean in Student Services: Please look at our practice guidance for those staff that teach suicide prevention standards. This document has been reviewed and shared with health teachers and school counselors. Thanks
BLS suicide prevention education practice guidance
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From Kinsey – Policy, Advocacy, Equity:
Family-teacher conferences:
Please ensure you coordinate and submit requests for interpreters ASAP. Your Language Specialist and Family Liaison can help advise and coordinate this with your office team.
Policy training resources:
Thanks for attending the policy training this week! Here is follow-up–please share with your staff and PTA/Booster Club leaders:
Advertising:
Other topics:
Holidays/”Do Not Schedule” Dates
Linguist Link (translation/interpretation request) account set-up for all staff
Bias incident student lessons:
As you wrap up the teaching of those lessons across all classrooms in the upcoming days, can you please share a celebration with Kinsey about something that your building did well with these lessons? Did you have a teacher successfully incorporate student voice? A team who was creative with implementation? Presence from the equity coaches that was helpful? Please let me know what your school did well!
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From Scott in IT:
To ensure the safety, quality, and compatibility of our technology, ALL tech-related purchases must be approved and processed through our IT department.
If the answer is “yes” to any of these questions, the purchase must go through IT:
- Is it a computer, tablet, or related device?
• Does it connect to or charge one of our devices?
- Does it connect to our networks or get installed on a device?
Why is this important?
While it may be tempting to purchase cheaper options from websites like Amazon, our district maintains strict standards to ensure all devices are safe, reliable, and compatible with our systems. Unsafe or substandard devices can:
- Pose risks such as electrical shock or fire
- Introduce security threats like malware
- Fail to work properly within our network environment
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From Scott in Communications:
Bookmark our Staff Portal for quick access to updates and staff resources
A great way to keep up on employee news, announcements, resources and tools is to check our STAFF PORTAL regularly. We are posting updates to the Portal almost every day.
We encourage all staff to bookmark the Portal on your browser. Better yet, you can designate it as one of your browser startup pages so it’s always right there. Here’s how to do that using Google Chrome:
1. In your Chrome browser window, click on the three vertical dots (for “More”) in the top right corner
2. Go down the list to “Settings” and click that
3. On the left, click “On startup”
4. Select “Open a specific page or set of pages” then “Add a new page”
5. Paste the site URL into the window and hit “Add” The URL for our Staff Portal is this: https://bendlapine.sharepoint.com/
You can add other startup pages as well, such as our District website (https://www.bend.k12.or.us/district) and your school website.
The “Quick Links” on the Staff Portal is a go-to resource for many of us. And keep an eye on the featured news items, which provides a mix of local news headlines and timely information we are sharing with you and our community.
Middle School Only
Quarter Classes: Be sure you are providing an extra half day of grading time to your teachers who have quarter classes.
High School Only
Financial Aid Night: Our BLS Financial Aid Information Night is coming up! We will have one event in Bend at MVHS and one in La Pine the following week at LPHS.
Please share with all your 12th grade families.
Here is communication in both Spanish and English that you can use to spread the word via newsletters and post on your socials.
****Once again, there there will be a separate Spanish Speaking Financial Aid night later this fall that is planned in conjunction with Kinsey and her team. This is noted in the communication linked above****
Calendar
October 14: TAG Admin/ICCL Meeting – 3:45 – 5:45 – Board Room
October 22: HS Principal work session – 8:00-10:00 @ Summit HS
October 24: MS Horizontal – 3:00 @ Pacific Crest
October 29-31: Middle School Conferences
November 5: MS and HS Administrator work session – 8:00-10:00 @ Cascade MS
November 7: New Course Proposals Due
Where in the World
This week we are highlighting Dave McKae, Dean at High Desert and his Happy Place! Dave shared: Ever since we took our boys on their first vacation, we were itching to go back and visit our family roots in Scotland. We spent a year planning and part of the trip included driving to the Cairngorms to go on a hike with reindeer! Fun fact: that’s less than one year of growth on its head as they lose and regrow new antlers each year. Planning big trips and taking our kids on new adventures is something that brings us great joy.
