Survey for future Admin/ICCL sessions: Please share the following survey with your staff.
In an effort to best plan our future professional development, please take a moment to fill out our Standards Based Grading PD Request survey. This survey is a follow up from the survey many of you filled out after the August 28th training at Pacific Crest.
From the Departments:
From Lisa (also emailed on 10/31):
Hi everyone,
We are about to begin our optional Admin PD trainings based on a variety of topics that you indicated in September that were of interest for you. These trainings will be delivered on Thursdays, either in the morning from 8-10 or in the afternoon from 2-4. These are voluntary- but you must sign up by the Friday before at 12 to confirm. That way, if no one signs up, the presenter doesn’t have to create an entire training for no customers. You will be notified about the location in an e-mail from your presenter the Monday of your training week.
Please sign up using the link next to each training (by the Friday before the training) and remember, this is our first attempt at this. We look forward to providing some just-in-time to match your needs. If you have ideas for topics or other information that you’d like me to know, please contact me directly. I am always interested in feedback and how we can help you feel the most prepared for the work you are doing each day. Thanks in advance for jumping in alongside us!
I hope the 2024-2025 school year has started smoothly and successfully for your team and students. Patrick Cook-Deegan, Founder + CEO of Wayfinder who lives in Bend would be honored to spend some time at your school. His goal is to deepen his understanding of how the Wayfinder product and implementation is impacting your school community.
He is eager to learn firsthand about what’s working well and where there may be areas for improvement. Patrick would welcome conversations with anyone on your team—whether a principal, counselor, teacher, or even a student—who can provide authentic insights on both the strengths and challenges of the Wayfinder experience.
Attached is a sign-up sheet for Patrick’s visit. Please select a date and time that works best with your school schedule.
Please don’t hesitate to reach out with any questions.
We have been engaged with the HDESD regarding the difficulty with filling substitute EA needs. The HDESD have been very helpful, and we developed several strategies that you should know.
1. The HDESD has increase the hourly wage for classified/EA subs based on the vacancy and job type. Formerly, all classified/EA subs were paid $17 per hour. This will be accompanied by a new Enhanced Recruitment Efforts which will involveSocial Media Campaigns, Inter-District Parent Communication, and Community Outreach.
EA I – $18/hour
EA II – $20/hour
EA III – $20/hour
Alternative Ed
Behavior Support
Inclusion
Regular Instruction
Student Success
ELL
Office Staff
2. Cross-Role Flexibility:
We have granted the HDESD the authority to automatically place licensed substitutes (paid at the higher licensed rate) in the EA 2 and EA 3 category (see above) if a sub request is still unfilled the day before the vacancy. This will remainder in place until the end of the year. If the request id for a long-term sub, then a licensed sub can fill an EA 2 or EA 3 position for 1 week at a time, while a non-licensed sub is recruited.
3. Incentive pay structure for high-demand days:
We are currently working on an incentive pay structure for the 30 most high demand days of the year. Non-licensed subs that accept sub positions on these days will receive a $25 bonus for the day. Further, we are under current discussion to extend and modify this as needed.
The HDESD will send up monthly reports so we can monitor if these measures are increasing our sub fill rates. Thanks for your patience and understanding.
It’s that time of year again. November 21st is College and Career Day in Bend-La Pine Schools. As with last year, we are looking to draw attention to the multitude of pathways available to students after they graduate high school. This is a K-12 day! We want all students to be dreaming about what options they have after they leave our schools.
Here are a few things you could do at your site to make the day a success. It would be great if classrooms or advisories could look to do something for just 10-15 minutes this day.
Dress as a professional
Encourage students and staff to dress up as someone from a career they are interested in. Remember there are a lot of great careers out there!
Wear college colors
Encourage students to wear the colors of a favorite college. Remember, college can mean community college, trade school, 4-year university, etc. Be careful with wording here as college brand clothing can be expensive and prevent students from feeling like they can participate. Colors are more inclusionary.
Consider incorporating videos or lessons bringing awareness to careers and colleges.
Our 6-12 sites could lean into some of the activities in SchooLinks. All secondary students have required activities to complete through BLS School Counseling curriculum and to complete their Educational Plan and Profile, so this would be a perfect opportunity to complete one of these required activities. Consider onboarding all your students if you haven’t already done so. Students are required to take a “Find your Path” assessment when first logging in that will jumpstart the college and career exploration process.
Wayfinder also has some great resources, especially their integration with Roadtrip Nation and their Future Ready Collection K-12. For middle school, these have been added for the week of November 18th as potential advisory lessons in our scope and sequence.
Here is a great website from the State of Oregon called Career Journeys. There are amazing short videos, lesson plans and other activities any teacher could do.
Consider inviting parents from the community in to talk about their careers.
This could be done in a variety of ways from assemblies, to advisory, to lunch. You could also ask parents to submit a short video of them talking about their jobs and stitch them together for students. Remember our visitor and volunteer requirements if you decide to invite parents in.
We hope you’ll join in the celebration. Please send pictures of your participation to Becca Burda.
Middle School Only
November Meetings: If you haven’t already done so, please sign up for a November visit with Stephen. Just one time this month. Please choose a date over the course of the month. Here is my Calendly link or you can use Outlook directly.
Calendar
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 25-29: Thanksgiving Break
Where in the World
This week we are highlighting Gabe Pagano, Principal at Cascade Middle School. Gabe says, “I love spending time on a river with family and friends. Most of the time, I do not fall out of the boat! 5:00am, an overnight river trip, making a pot of coffee, with my binoculars in hand.”
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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!
Help us celebrate the veterans throughout Bend-La Pine Schools on Monday, November 11! We would love to say “thank you for your service” on social media and include faces throughout the district. If you have a veteran (or more than one) in your building or department, please ask them if they would like to be included in a social media “thank you.” If the answer is yes, take their photo and email it to [email protected], along with the staff member’s name.
Accessing OSAS test scores and ODE Individual Student Reports (ISRs) in Synergy
Please share the following information with any staff who may need it, particularly teachers who may want to discuss OSAS during conferences.
We have been working for some time to enhance access to OSAS state test results across multiple Synergy applications. Here is a folder with brief instructions for staff, parents, and students to access OSAS state test scores in a variety of ways. All these groups can view and download the one-page ISRs that ODE creates each year. Teachers also can view lists of OSAS scores for their classes in TeacherVue. ISRs from spring 2024 testing have been loaded in English and Spanish ISRs should be there next week. Whether Spanish ISRs are loaded for a student is based on the ‘resolved’ language in Synergy.
ODE requires schools to report OSAS results to parents annually. In the past this process has been time and resource intensive and involved downloading, printing, and sorting thousands of pieces of paper. With ISRs available in both ParentVue and StudentVue, users can now access OSAS results on-demand in Synergy. This will significantly reduce the number of printed copies that end up in trash or recycling. Schools still should plan to print an ISR for any parents who request it and may continue to print ISRs as makes sense.
During conferences, teachers who want to use ISRs now have the option to quickly pull them up in real time and display them on any screens that are available to them.
Please reach out to Dave VanLoo with any questions about accessing OSAS results in Synergy.
From the Departments:
From Kinsey – Policy, Advocacy, & Equity (repeat):
Upcoming events and key dates:
Please mark your calendars for these events:
Reminder: 3 years’ worth of Holidays/”Do Not Schedule”Dates
District-wide 7th annual Latino Family Night:
Thursday, November 21st 5:30-7:30pm at MVHS
The Woodburn High School student mariachi band will be performing! Come grab some dinner, check out their performance, and connect with families, students, and staff for some games and fun!
Invitation here. Family Liaisons and Latino Family Advisory members will provide you with some copies, but feel free to share in staff and family newsletters.
MAC Survey Day: This will happen sometime the week of Nov 11. Please make sure your FAN Advocate can get in front of staff ahead of that week, to introduce themselves and remind about procedures. Also, thank you for prioritizing your own time to claim an activity that day if at all possible. Without you doing that, we can’t afford to have FAN Advocates in our schools (eek).
LGBTQIA2S+ Alliance principal conversation:
Our Alliance group would love to connect with principals (or an administrator from each school) for some conversation and to learn about what you’re proud of at your school, as far as LGBTQ student/family supports, resources, and experiences they can seek out.
Please plan to join us Tuesday, January 21st. (I’ll remind you later—just mark you calendar 🙂)
Reminder: 3 years’ worth of Holidays/”Do Not Schedule”Dates
Middle School Only
YouTube Access for K-8 Students – Trial of “Allow List” Solution
As you know, we are currently blocking all YouTube content for students in grades K-8. Starting next week, we will be implementing a trial of an “allow list” solution, which will enable students to access a curated set of videos. At present, nearly 1,000 YouTube videos necessary for the SchoolLinks curriculum have been added to this allow list.
Why is this important? If this trial proves successful, we can explore expanding the allow list to include additional teacher-requested YouTube content.
We understand that limiting access to non-essential YouTube content remains a high priority for our staff, and this allow list solution is designed to support that goal without diverting from it.
High School Only
From Stephanie Bent: We have created a school TAG report for the high school level. If you would like access to your school’s report, please contact Stephanie and she will share the document with you.
Support our Internship Specialists!
Through our contract with East Cascade Works, we have partnered with COIC to hire two Internship Specialists this year. Sarah Cochran oversees the district program and focuses her time developing internships with youth in La Pine. Renee Skjersaa facilitates internships with our six high schools in Bend.
Their goal is to interface with businesses in Bend and La Pine to connect students with job shadows and internships. We do have the ability to pay students for internships through a grant recently secured with COIC.
Sarah and Renee have both passed the volunteer background check and have non-staff badges, so they do not need to check in through the Raptor kiosk. They are approved be in our schools regularly to connect with our students and will be working out of our Future Centers. We are grateful to have Sarah and Renee working on behalf of our students! Please read on to learn more about them:
“Sarah Cochran, YCC Program Coordinator and La Pine Internship Specialist, is a Green Bay Packers fan who loves rescue dogs and has 25 years of classroom teaching experience. She is happy to continue working with staff and students through the unique partnership COIC has with the Central OR school districts. Specifically, she is excited to continue working with the Bend La Pine School District, supporting youth and serving as another resource in their development and quest to learn more about themselves. Finding meaningful and local work-based experiences for our collective youth, whether these are job shadows, internships, or working on a resume, Sarah believes it is a real privilege to connect with BLP students and support other COIC/Youth Career Connect staff in our region.
Renee Skjersaa, YCC Bend Internship Specialist, is an avid dog enthusiast who enjoys outdoor beauty of Central OR and has over 20 years of classroom teaching experience. She is new to COIC/Youth Career Connect as of just less than a month ago! Renee brings enthusiasm to learning about the many layers involved with creating a work-based experience for students to access and has been actively pursuing local business opportunities to bring to BLP’s youth. She looks forward to helping students gain a better understanding of what it takes to put their best foot forward when seeking either a first job, or preparing for an interview, and then landing a great work-based experience! Being back in the schools and supporting youth is something that excites Renee about her role with YCC and you will find her bustling about the 6 Bend high schools Monday-Thursday.”
Calendar
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
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
Where in the World
This week we are highlighting Leah Boon, Dean of Students at Cascade. Leah states that her place is Hood River/The Gorge. “You can’t beat the beauty! Isn’t it weird how you don’t truly appreciate a place’s beauty growing up but later can’t get enough?”
Last call for any feedback on content as we update the attendance policy. Reminders from our conversation at your recent horizontal meeting:
The draft linked above includes all language from both OSBA’s sample and our current version. We’ll weave them into one coherent policy, but we left all the language from both in order for you to review and give input on preferences regarding any/all of it.
Please share with relevant office staff and ask for their insights.
Feedback we’re looking for:
Anything in this language that contradicts our preferred practices, or anything missing that we should add to capture current processes working well in your buildings;
Requests for training or procedural support related to this policy topic;
Please don’t make specific red-line edits—I’m just looking for your general thoughts on what’s helpful for you to codify in policy.
Send your team’s feedback to Kinsey via email or phone call, by October 25
Related to attendance: We’ll be offering an admin PD group to dig into best practices for home visits. More on that soon!
Upcoming events and key dates:
Please mark your calendars for these events:
District-wide 7th annual Latino Family Night:
Thursday, November 21st 5:30-7:30pm at MVHS
The Woodburn High School student mariachi band will be performing! Come grab some dinner, check out their performance, and connect with families, students, and staff for some games and fun!
Invitation here. Family Liaisons and Latino Family Advisory members will provide you with some copies, but feel free to share in staff and family newsletters.
MAC Survey Day: This will happen sometime the week of Nov 11. Please make sure your FAN Advocate can get in front of staff ahead of that week, to introduce themselves and remind about procedures. Also, thank you for prioritizing your own time to claim an activity that day if at all possible. Without you doing that, we can’t afford to have FAN Advocates in our schools (eek).
LGBTQIA2S+ Alliance principal conversation:
Our Alliance group would love to connect with principals (or an administrator from each school) for some conversation and to learn about what you’re proud of at your school, as far as LGBTQ student/family supports, resources, and experiences they can seek out.
Please plan to join us Tuesday, January 21st. (I’ll remind you later—just mark you calendar 🙂)
Reminder: 3 years’ worth of Holidays/”Do Not Schedule”Dates
Please review the updated AQI protocols on our staff portal. We have updated the AQI map resources for administrators to use to make real-time decisions on AQI readings near your schools. We will now be using the EPA Air Now Smoke and Fire Map or the Watch Duty AQI Smoke and Fire Map applications that provide real-time AQI readings.
We will also be forming a stakeholder committee to review the AQI thresholds for cancellation of outdoor recess, sports, and activities. We will use the feedback from that committee to make future decisions and potential updates to our AQI threshold levels.
The public facing district website AQI page will be updated with this information in the next few days.
Departments
From Becca in Communications:
Celebrate a successful start to the school year at Educators’ Night Out at the High Desert Museum!
Thursday, October 24, 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm
New this year – join us for a special presentation for school administrators! We’ll share about upcoming grant opportunities and projects. Administrators will also have their own opportunity to win a raffle (we’ll even give you more tickets for each educator from your school you bring with you!)
Delicious snacks from the one of the best chefs in Central Oregon – Luckey’s Woodsman
Fabulous door prizes from local businesses like Bar Rio, Bend Pet Express, Greg’s Grill, Mountain Supply, and so many more!
Horizontals: Based on your feedback we will be moving to one two-hour meeting a month on a Thursday from 3-5 starting in November. Additionally, the majority preferred walkthroughs for our additional time together. Stephen will be updating calendars and reaching out with details soon.
High School only
Upshift: Just a reminder to enter your data!
Calendar
October 22: HS Principal work session – 8:00-10:00 @ Summit HS
October 23: All Administrators Training – EWS training @ 3:00-4:30 BSHS Perseverance Hall
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
November 19: HS Assistant Principals work session – 8:00-10:00 @ BTA
Where in the world
This week we are highlighting Matt Kitchen, Assistant Principal at Mountain View High School and his Happy Place! Matt shared: my happy place is on the water. Fishing, boating, or just watching. But the honest answer is that my happy place is who I am with. This is a picture of me and my girls at a camp this past spring. Being with people that I love and enjoy is my happy place.
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.
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
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:
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!
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
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.
****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.
Our first Educator Network Day of the year is this Wednesday, October 9. Administrators are required to attend and support two of the four sessions. Please ensure attendance is taken at the session. Here is the LINK for information. Here is the LINK to taking attendance.
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.
Reminders/Action items:
From Jessica Houser in the Business Office:
This is a reminder that the deadline for submitting information regarding employees who missed work due to being in a level two or three evacuation zone between September 9th and 17th is tomorrow, Friday, October 4th at 12pm.
If you have not filled out the Google From, please do so at your earliest convenance to ensure we have all the necessary information. Your input is important for us to determine the next steps for those affected. There is no need for your employees to submit additional forms at this time.
Reminder: All staff will receive a link to our annual cybersecurity training and are required to complete this mandatory training by November 30. It will take approximately 30 minutes to complete and is crucial in helping to protect both personal and district data from cyberattacks. Principals, plan to provide one staff meeting between now and November for staff to complete this training.
Lesson Design Cycle (LDC): (LDC sites only) As a reminder, we’ve flushed out the LDC calendar for first and second semester. Dates can also be found here. The sites that have opted into this practice need to work to identify staff for participation. Here is the interest form. We are limited to 8 folks per session so it will come down to one or two teachers from participating sites. Please reach out to Dean, Katie, or Stephen with questions.
Many of you have been asking about dates for the “Full” CPI trainings and refresher options for this fall. A few things to note:
These trainings are for those that need to be trained to implement holds in a restraint/seclusion scenario. You should have a team of folks at you building with this level of training.
These trainings are different than the “De-escalation only” trainings that are being offered for secondary staff and in-house for elementary staff. All CPI trainings will count toward you buildings 1:50 ratio required by SB 283
You can still use this CPI trained spreadsheet to see who has the “full” training in your building. Note: at this time, any person listed on the spreadsheet has the full training w/holds
Folks can sign up for the “full” courses in UKG. They are titled “CPI initial” and “CPI refresher”
Remember to pick a date between 11/4 and 11/22 to administer the survey to all of your 8th and 11th graders. Then, plan to send parent notifications out a couple of weeks before that date. Here is a folder containing all the information and resources schools need to administer the SHS, including survey links, parent notification/opt-out forms, survey previews, and instructions for teachers proctoring the survey. Let me know what questions you have or what support you may need. Thanks.
From Jenn in Student Services: School Counselors, Student Success, and Principals
I hope the school year is going well! On October 9th, we will be adding an additional Student Safe training before Educator Network Day (END) at 2:45 pm. For the week of October 7th, please work with your building admin to adjust your prep and case management time accordingly over the course of next week to allow for you to leave the building early, including travel time. Caldera will have dismissal at 2:15 so please plan to arrive by 2:10 pm.
2:15 – 2:45 Student Safe Training in Caldera Auditorium
2:45 – 4:00 SIW/END Caldera Auditorium
Timesheets are available for elementary SSCs and counselors from 3:15 to 4 pm and it is optional for you to stay past your contract hours. SSIs, Jen Goodman has communicated a separate plan with you about your training for the day. Please reach out with any questions.
Digital Citizenship week is October 14-18, an annual campaign to promote healthy, balanced, and positive approach to media and tech use among young people. Here are some handy resources.
Our BLS Financial Aid Information Night is coming up in two weeks! We will have one event in Bend at MVHS and one in La Pine the following week at LPHS.
****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****
We are excited to introduce Canopy, Bend-La Pine Schools new Employee Assistance Program (EAP) provider!
Canopy EAP services include mental health support, counseling, behavioral coaching, digital tools, and resources to help navigate life and work – from financial coaching to gym and pet insurance discounts – Canopy’s mission is to create happier and healthier lives for employees.
Canopy services are free, confidential, and available to ALL district employees and their family members.
Learn more about Canopy and how to access their services on our district’s Benefits website.
Middle School Only
Conferences: As a reminder, the schedule for conferences this fall is: Wednesday 10/23 – Teacher Work SIW (planning for Tuesday 10/29 conferences), Tuesday 10/29 – School day & evening conferences after school (4 hours), Wednesday 10/30 – Teacher work day (8 hours) and conferences in the evening (4 hours), Thursday 10/31 – all day conferences (8 hours), no evening conferences, Friday 11/1 – Non-work day.
Please let Stephen know if you have any questions.
Calendar
October 8: HS admin and counseling work session- 8:00-10:00 @ Ed Center in boardroom
October 9: Educator Network SIW Here is the LINK for information.
October 10: MS Horizontal – 3:00 – 4:30 – High Desert MS
October 14: TAG Admin/ICCL Meeting – 3:45 – 5:45 – Board Room
October 22: HS Principal work session – 8:00-10:00 @ Summit HS
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 Jessica Gambee and her Happy Place! Jessica shared: My happy place would be any summer adventure, particularly near or on the water. I love camping and exploring new places with my family. This is a picture of my kids paddle boarding on Elk Lake, in a rare moment of getting along.
1. Lesson Design Cycle (LDC): (LDC sites only) As a reminder, we’ve flushed out the LDC calendar for first and second semester. Dates can also be found here. The sites that have opted into this practice need to work to identify staff for participation. Here is the interest form. We are limited to 8 folks per session so it will come down to one or two teachers from participating sites. Please reach out to Dean, Katie, or Stephen with questions.
2. Admin/ICCL: Remind your ICCL team we are meeting from 4:15 to 6:15 at Caldera High School next Tuesday October 1st. Dean sent out a calendar invite for you to forward to your team. He also shared invites for our three other sessions. TAG ICCLs (MS only) do not need to attend this one.
3. Plan 30 minutes for staff to complete Cybersecurity training (from Scott):
October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month, and we’re excited to announce Cyber October! Throughout the month, our IT department will be sharing valuable resources to help improve your cyber hygiene and protect our school district from cyber threats.
Here’s what you can expect:
Weekly Tips and Tricks: Easy-to-follow advice to help safeguard your digital life.
Scam of the Week Announcements: Stay informed about the latest online threats.
Cybersecurity Best Practices: Strategies to keep your data and devices safe.
In addition, all staff will receive a link to our annual cybersecurity training. This mandatory training will take approximately 30 minutes to complete and is crucial in helping to protect both personal and district data from cyberattacks. The window to complete the training is October 1st through November 30th.
Look for these updates in your inbox each week. Together, we can strengthen our defenses against cyberattacks!
Thank you for your continued vigilance and support.
5. From Kinsey: Bias Incident student lessons (repeat):
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.
Information from Departments
From Dave VanLoo:
2024-25 District Assessment, Testing, & Surveys
Here are two updated support documents summarizing common standardized tests and surveys for the current school year. One is a schedule showing when different assessment activities occur. The other is a general overview of the purpose and logistics of these assessments. Both documents will continue to be updated throughout the year as is beneficial. Please reach out with any questions.
Starting in 2024, Oregon’s plan is for schools to administer the Student Health Survey (SHS) annually to all 6th, 8th, and 11th graders. Schools should pick a date between 11/4 and 11/22 to administer the survey, and plan to send parent notifications out a couple of weeks before that date. Here is a folder containing all the information and resources schools need to administer the SHS, including survey links, parent notification/opt-out forms, survey previews, and instructions for teachers proctoring the survey. Let me know what questions you have or what support you may need. Thanks.
New this year schools will have access to data within Synergy’s MTSS module. Over the past few months staff have been hard at work building the infrastructure to make these tools available. Within the next few weeks, we expect to make the Early Warning System (EWS) available to schools. EWS is a tool for identifying students who may need additional support in the areas of attendance, behavior/discipline, and academics. Later this year additional tools will become available. While this development is occurring, vast amounts of student data remain available in DART and in the OSAS portal (state testing data). Reach out to Dave if you have questions about accessing or interpreting these data.
From Nurse Michelle: OHA / ODE has changed the Communicable Disease Guidance for Schools guidelines this year for students and staff returning after having vomiting or diarrhea. They may now return to school after 24hrs of no vomiting or no diarrhea (this replaces the previous 48hr guideline)
Attached is a copy of the When to Keep Your Student Home. This information has been sent out to office managers
Here is the link to the full Communicable Disease Guidance packet
Several admin are hoping to use data from the Waypoint student assessment to design an SEL goal for their schools or to use with SLGG goals. Therefore, the new assessment window is open until November 15th.
Waypoints, the initial summative assessment for students will be live in Wayfinder from September 15th through Novermber15th. Summative Waypoints allow educators to measure student growth of Wayfinder’s six Core Skills across the school year. By administering the summative Waypoints assessments, educators can understand areas of strength and growth for individual students and the class to make informed, data-driven decisions about instruction. Here is the info on Waypoints, including the new Waypoints Implementation Guides to help teachers set up the reason we are assessing students as well as instructions. The final summative assessment for students will be open May 12th through June 13th for students.
Message from Jason & Ted (IT) and Eric (Student Services) about Synergy & Discipline Entry
We have learned that all incidents being inputted into Synergy as “Admin-Managed” are being labeled as “Major” in Synergy. Not every incident administrators input are going to be Major, so we needed to create a solution to this problem.
IT has generated a solution to this issue that is now LIVE in Synergy. Moving forward, you will notice the following options for you to select when entering incidents:
Staff-Managed
Minor Admin-Managed
Major Admin-Managed
Using these three options we can now correctly input incidents in alignment with our Student Code of Conduct:
Staff-Managed = Code of Conduct Response Level 1 (by Staff) [NOTE: Not all schools are utilizing Staff-Managed this year]
Minor Admin-Managed = Code of Conduct Response Level 2 (by Administrators)
Major Admin-Managed = Code of Conduct Response Level 3 or 4 (by Administrators)
Last call for SIOP+ Fall 2024! FLIER Sign-ups close on Friday, September 27th. Applicants will be notified on Monday September 30th if they are a part of the 20 teacher spaces available. Once notified, you will be instructed on how to set up your first sub request for this training.
See last week’s email blast (below) and the attached flyer. Thank you!!
SIOP+ Fall 2024 . . .
Are you interested in spending quality time with colleagues, increasing your strategies for equity, inclusion and student engagement, and the option to earn 3 graduate credits from OSU Cascades?
If so . . . then you will love SIOP+!
SIOP is a research-based instructional model that has been shown to boost content area learning for students who are acquiring English.
Did you know…that sheltered instruction is effective with ALL students, not just English language learners, and especially for students coming from high poverty backgrounds.
If interested . . download the attached flyer for dates and times. Teachers, TOSAS and Administrators are encouraged and welcome!
Many of you have been asking about dates for the “Full” CPI trainings and refresher options for this fall. A few things to note:
These trainings are for those that need to be trained to implement holds in a restraint/seclusion scenario. You should have a team of folks at you building with this level of training.
These trainings are different than the “De-escalation only” trainings that are being offered for secondary staff and in-house for elementary staff. All CPI trainings will count toward you buildings 1:50 ratio required by SB 283
You can still use this CPI trained spreadsheet to see who has the “full” training in your building. Note: at this time, any person listed on the spreadsheet has the full training w/holds
Folks can sign up for the “full” courses in UKG. They are titled “CPI initial” and “CPI refresher”
We are excited to bring together K-12 educators from Central Oregon to continue our learning, planning, and sharing on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its emerging role in our schools and districts.
Please save the date and plan to join us at:
Event: AI for Teaching and Leading
Date: Friday, October 11, 2024
Time: 8:30 a.m – 3:30 p.m.
Location: Ridgeview High School
This summit will feature sessions, keynote addresses, and team collaboration time on topics such as understanding the AI landscape, tools, and language; AI for teaching and learning; AI in STEM, CTE, and math; and more.
This free event is open to Central Oregon educators at all stages of their AI learning journey, with particular interest for district curriculum leaders, principals, teachers, and instructional coaches.
October Meetings: Time to sign up for October visits. Please choose two dates over the course of the month. Here is my Calendly link or you can use Outlook directly.
Staff Service Awards: If you have not already done so, please schedule a time with Stephen to have staff service awards presented.
Shout Out from Safety Team: The Safety Team has spent the first few weeks of school observing lockdown drills across the district. Shoutout to High Desert Middle School for doing an excellent job in their first lockdown drill of the school year! All staff participated in the drill and understood the importance of talking to students about making decisions in an emergency. Staff explained to students why they needed to remain quiet and found creative ways to get their class out of sight. The HDMS admin team invited the District Safety team, members of their school safety team, SROs, and other members of the Bend Police Department to participate and provide feedback.
October 8: HS admin and counseling work session- 8:00-10:00 @ Ed Center in boardroom
October 9: Educator Network SIW
October 10: MS Horizontal – 3:00 – 4:30 – High Desert MS
October 14: TAG Admin/ICCL Meeting – 3:45 – 5:45 – Board Room
Where in the World
This week we are highlighting Leslie Reif and her Happy Place! Leslie shared: “Our happy place is the Oregon Coast and visit there frequently. We have been watching our favorite 80’s & 90’s movies as a family. Goonies is one of our favs and we went on a Goonies Adventure last Spring Break. My kids were 7 & 9 and loved every minute of it! This is Cannon Beach from Ecola State Park.”
Share YOUR happy place next week! Email a picture and brief description to Katie or Stephen!
We are offering two options for dates to attend a workshop related to approving and accepting funds for advertisements. (This includes ‘donations’ that come in exchange for any form of publicity for the donor.) This training will help you feel clear and supported in determining whether and how to accept money from local companies or individuals, and is a chance to align across schools in accordance with the updated advertising policy and a few other related policies.
Principals/Office Teams: Please invite relevant staff (sample message here)–note the sign-up sheet there, for each of your team members to confirm attendance.
Each school should ensure the following roles in your building are trained: Administrator, athletic director, activities director, yearbook advisor, music/drama teachers, any additional or support staff who are involved in receiving or approving advertisement requests and funds.
Holidays and dates:
You received a reminder again this year about protecting some significant religious observance fall dates from any special events. Please check your school calendar now and ensure there are no special/one-time student/family meetings or events scheduled on these days:
Rosh Hashanah: Evening of Wed Oct 2 to evening of Fri Oct 4
Yom Kippur: Sat Oct 12
Within the next few weeks, you will receive a calendar with key dates like these over the next few years, so you can plan further ahead—stay tuned.
If your school is allowing any costumes for around Halloween, here are some lessons to discuss with students: K-5, 6-12, Poster. Equity Coaches can support these conversations if needed.
Please share this with your teachers, and students: Judy Campbell with Discovery West has arranged for Dr. Ellen Ochoa, first Hispanic Female Astronaut to go into space, to speak. Please contact Judy to include your students and staff in this presentation. Judy’s contact information is 541-410-9113.
Dr. Ellen Ochoa, is a former director of NASA’s Johnson Space Center, an American engineer, astronaut, and the first Hispanic woman to go to space and has logged close to 1000 hours in space after four space flights.
Every student and staff member in Bend-La Pine Schools has a Managed Apple ID.
Your Apple ID sign in is your Bend-La Pine Schools email address.
To enhance the security of our digital environment and protect sensitive information, we strongly encourage all staff to use their Managed Apple IDs on their school-issued devices instead of personal Apple IDs.
Why Use Your Managed Apple ID?
Enhanced Security: Managed Apple IDs are specifically designed for educational environments, providing an extra layer of security and management capabilities.
Data Protection: Using your Managed Apple ID helps prevent sensitive school data from being inadvertently stored in personal accounts, reducing the risk of data breaches or leaks.
Seamless Access: Managed Apple IDs provide streamlined access to school resources, apps, and services, ensuring you have everything you need for your role.
200Gb of storage! All users can take advantage of 200GB of iCloud storage and access it from any of their school issued devices.
If you need assistance in making this change, please don’t hesitate to reach out to our IT Client Services team or our help desk.
Note: Nearly 300 Bend-La Pine Schools computers are currently using personal Apple ID’s. Beginning October, users on these devices will periodically receive a message discouraging this practice.
Thank you for your cooperation and for helping us keep our school’s information safe and secure.
Action Areas/Reminders
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.
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!
—————————————————————–
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.
Information from Departments
New Course Descriptions for 25-26 are DUE by November 7. Use this LINK to make your request.
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.
We have cancelled the CPI de-escalation training for Sept. 24th due to very low enrollment. I am sorry for any inconvenience this may cause you. Further, in addition to the other 4 available dates, we have added an additional training date for December 3rd, which is now viewable in UKG.
For admin, please review the CPI spreadsheet to see how many folks need to be trained at your site to meet the SB 283 standard. Currently, we have 29 people (out of 129 total needed) enrolled for all available trainings. Thanks
In the next few days, you will be receiving a personalized notice (see below) inviting you to Hungerford Online. The Hungerford law firm has been a state leader in supporting districts with SPED/504 legal issues. When you receive the email, set you password and take a peek! These are IEP/504 training videos that you can use for your own learning or with your staff. Your SPED team members will be receiving this access as well, and we will discuss the use at their upcoming general supervision training. Further, we will be offering some facilitated training opportunities for you this year and will be utilizing this resource.
High School Only
From Jess: We are thrilled to be hosting our district-wide School Counseling Family Night, taking place next week! This event, hosted by BLS School Counseling, will focus on college application support and resources.
High Schools: Please ensure that communication regarding this important event has been shared with your families. Example communication is listed here. Your support in promoting this initiative is greatly appreciated! Thank you!
Middle School Only
TAG ICCL: Just a reminder that we are hoping to move forward quickly with the hiring of our TAG ICCL members. These folks will attend four district trainings and then integrate with your ICCL team to meet their time obligations. The four meeting dates are 10/14, 1/13, 3/10, and 5/19 from 3:45 to 5:45 in the board room. We would also like to have your administrator in charge of TAG attend these meetings. If you have any questions, please contact Stephen DuVal.
October Meetings: Time to sign up for October visits. Please choose two dates over the course of the month. Here is my Calendly link or you can use Outlook directly.
Calendar
September 18: Teacher Work SIW – NO ADMIN MEETING
September 24: High School Principal Horizontal – 8:00-10:00 @ Realms
September 26: Middle School Horizontal – 3:00 @ Cascade
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!
—————————————————————–
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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!
Congratulations on a successful first week of the school year!
We hope these first few days of the 2024-25 school year have been filled with joy at having students in our schools once again! Let’s ensure that every student and staff member thrives this year!
Here is the OSEA CBA. This is currently an internal document. Please do not distribute.
To Do:
Tracking attendance and enrollment (reminder): Your office staff has been asked to track student attendance during the first week of school. Please support your staff to ensure these tasks get completed as this allows us to have a clearer picture of our enrollment. Please contact Rachel Mavis with questions.
By Monday, 9/9/2024, if a student has not shown up to school, the student will be No Showed, unless a parent called in to excuse the student.
For excused absences, students will remain enrolled up to the 11th day of absence, then they will be No Showed.
For all students who miss the first days of school, then show up, office staff will be required to change enrollment and class start dates to reflect the date the student arrived. OAR581-023-0006
Action items/reminders
New Synergy Gradebook – (a reminder): 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. Laura has already shared the slideshow, “Synergy New Gradebook Highlights,” with last year’s Canvas Support Team.
Bias Incident Student Lessons (From Kinsey – a reminder): Early this fall, please reserve time at a staff meeting, PLC, or SIW for your staff to review the Bias Incident student lessons and prepare to teach them. In response to ongoing feedback and engagement with staff and students, Equity Coaches are refining prior years’ lessons. We’ll push out the 24-25 lessons to you within two weeks. I’d sugget aiming to have those completed across your building by October 25 latest. More to come—for now, just a note so you can plug this into your staff collaboration calendar.
Information from the Departments
From Kinsey – complaint process follow up:
Here are some follow-up resources from our recent Complaint Management conversation. Note a few actions items for you below—thank you!
Also, I recommend you bookmark key links or save this email somewhere accessible. Please share this message with relevant leaders in your building (office staff, counseling, athletics, etc).
Reach out if I can support with any complaints, bias incidents, or related policy issues.
Flowchart for navigating complaints, policies, and timelines.
I have more hard copies, too.
Form for reporting a complaint or a bias incident.
Note: this form is new! Please be sure all staff in your building replace old bookmarked versions with the link above. The link on student and staff iPads has been updated to this new form.
The poster leads to this webpage with details on complaints and a link to the reporting form.
Please replace old versions of this poster that are displayed at your site. At a minimum, display the new poster in your lobby, staff lounge, and gym areas.
Reminders:
If something moves from a concern to a complaint, be sure it is promptly recorded via the reporting form linked above.
When a complaint is submitted via the form, I’ll connect with you. You’ll receive a link to your School Dashboard of all complaints and bias incidents, including the new submission.
In the Dashboard, click on the new complaint to see details, record outcomes, add your team notes, and/or to request additional support.
We have identified an unexpected change to typical discipline data entry which has occurred because there is no mechanism to separate those piloting Teacher Referrals from those who are not when it comes to “Accepting” (or “Denying”) discipline incidents.
Previously, there was no concept of an “Incident Approval Queue”, you simply entered a discipline incident using either Student Incident or the Incidents screen in Synergy and the data was immediately ‘live’ in the system.
However, this year some schools are piloting Teacher Referrals, which introduces the concept of (and a Synergy screen called) “Incident Approval Queue”, allowing administrators to determine what discipline data should be accepted (or declined) from entering the system.
The side effect of adding this has been that ALL schools are affected by the change and will need to use the approval queue to finalize data entry by accepting ALL incidents regardless of how they are generated. This is required for the data to be state/federal reported, as well as being displayed in ParentVUE.
What you need to do:
As a principal or VP/Dean, using the Synergy quick launch, type “Incident Approval Queue” and wait for the search to complete, then click on the resulting link to enter the Incident Approval Queue screen.
Once you have entered the screen, you can review any incident in question. You can click the Student ID to review the Student Incident screen, and the ID (Incident ID) to go directly to the incident in question if you want to review beyond the description displayed in the grid.
NOTE: For those participating in the Teacher Referral pilot, you may want to edit the Incident description to include your initials at the end of the description if you are working on an incident to indicate to the rest of your team you are handling that incident. Therefore, any incidents entered by a teacher via the Teacher Referral process without a set of initials has NOT yet been reviewed by anyone. This may be a quick way to identify who is working on what until we can get a better solution in place for you to manage who is handling which incidents / students.
To accept the incident, look to the far-right Action button, and select “Accept” if the incident has had all the data entry done for the incident and is ready for parents to view, etc.
NOTE: Most users will only have Accept / Deny – don’t worry about the other options if you don’t have them.
This will remove the incident from the Queue and make if available to view in ParentVUE and to be included in State/Federal reporting. THIS IS REQUIRED FOR ALL INCIDENTS.
If you have any questions or concerns, please contact any/all of the following via email:
From Dean: Please check in with teachers teaching Math 1 (either in MS or HS) or Algebraic Problem Solving to confirm that they have signed up for the required Math Medic training on 9/17. Full day subs are covered by TLC.
Welcome back to a new school year! I hope you all had a restful summer and are ready for another successful year ahead.
I’m pleased to inform you that we have updated all of our 504 forms to better support our students’ needs. In addition, we will be introducing a new process for annual 504s that I believe will be a significant time saver for you.
To ensure everyone is familiar with these updates, we will be holding a mandatory training session. You can choose from one of three times on September 11, 2024: 8:15 AM, 10:30 AM, or 2:00 PM in the Board Room at the Education Center. NO SIGN UP NECESSARY.
Thank you for your continued dedication to our students. I look forward to seeing you at the training and to another year of great work together.
New Incident Report Form now available in the Staff Portal
As a follow up to the investigations trainings in August, the revised Incident Report Form is now available in the Staff Portal. The form now has a second page for the post-incident/accident investigation. BLS Incident Report Form – staff 9.2024.pdf
As a reminder, a site administrator or supervisor must complete a post-incident/accident investigation after every incident that results in employee injury. The investigation must be completed within 5-10 business days following the injury. Please reach out to Andrea Wilson if you have any questions, need assistance with an investigation, or have form feedback. Thank you again for your partnership and help as we navigate this new process!
We have a new coaching model this year and many of the coaching assignments have changed as we onboard 10 new SSCs. Going forward, schools with the Student Success Intervention will have a Student Success team that will have two coaches – one team member will have a mental health/clinical/care coordination focus (Darlene and Megan) and one will have a system, SPED, PBSP/Data focus (Jen and Amanda) but they will work very closely together and will take the lead based on the situation or students need. We will be moving forward with building out a Medicaid billing model for our clinicians over this school year to launch for next school year. This information has not been shared with SSCs yet but more information to come as we learn more about what is possible in Oregon with Medicaid and schools. This became a possible opportunity for us going forward as of September 1st. The team has already been working closely with teams onboarding new SSCs so please reach out to your coaches if you have any questions. More to come as we navigate this new transition….
Wayfinder:
We continue to have integration issues with Clever and Wayfinder for some staff. If you have a staff member that does not have the correct access or correct school listed, please use the instructional tool process to request what is needed. All elementary and middle schools that ordered workbooks should be receiving them this week if they have not already.
Waypoints, the intial summative assessment for students will be live in Wayfinder from September 15th through October 18th and the final summative assessment for students will be open May 12th through June 13th for students. Summative Waypoints allow educators to measure student growth of Wayfinder’s six Core Skills across the school year. By administering this optional summative Waypoints assessments, educators can understand areas of strength and growth for individual students and the class to make informed, data-driven decisions about SEL instruction. Here is the info on Waypoints, including the new Waypoints Implementation Guides to help teachers set up the reason we are assessing students as well as instructions.
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.
We know this is a busy and exciting time with many staffing changes happening across your sites. Please be aware that the cutoff for processing Personnel Actions (PAs) to ensure accurate payment and proper system setup for employees is Tuesday, September 10th. Any PA actions for September should be initiated in UKG by Monday, September 9th, using the appropriate HR action under the ‘team’ tab.
After this date, payroll processing begins, and any delays in submitting PA actions may affect employee pay or cause system issues. We appreciate your continued support when employees have questions, such as “Why hasn’t my location been updated in UKG yet?” Once a request leaves your hands, please understand that it can take some time for the system to reflect the changes. Your patience during this process is greatly appreciated.
Reminders:
Classified Staff: PA actions should be completed for location changes (Nutrition, Custodial, and Transportation only), budget code changes, and FTE adjustments.
Certified Staff: PA actions should be completed for budget code changes, FTE adjustments, and position changes within your school.
For questions, please reach out to:
Classified Specialists: Cara Gienger and Kelly Marty at [email protected]
Licensed Specialists: Trish Uhart and Candy Gelatt at [email protected]
Payroll Specialists: Jenny Ostrom, Kate Pardo, Lisa Brinlee, and Jenny Helvie at [email protected]
Thank you and we hope it’s been an incredible week with students!
This is an important FYI that requires no action by building leaders.
ODE has signed a contract with Bureau Veritas (BV) to assess all school facilities. For partnering with them we (Bend La Pine Schools) will receive a comprehensive report detailing photos of system and component level deferred maintenance, assessor recommendations, cost to repair/replace system or component, cost to replace entire buildings, facility condition index, total gross square footage, observed Remaining Useful Life (RUL), ADA assessment findings and life safety deficiencies.
Please click on this Schedule of Visits beginning September 9th and continuing through November 1st to see when people will be visiting your school. Please note that BLS was assigned this schedule and was not offered input as to its timing. BV contractors will work with the BLS Maintenance and Custodial Departments to be on site visually inspecting facilities. School administrators are not required to attend the walk-through.
The information gathered by BV/ODE will be integral to Bend-LaPine Schools next Site/Facilities process in determining your schools’ facility’s needs.
There are two applications available to assist with classroom device management, Apple Classroom and JAMF Teacher.
Apple Classroom
Apple Classroom is familiar to Bend-La Pine teachers, as it has been available for some time. The guide linked here provides all the information you need to get started with Apple Classroom. Common uses include:
Monitoring all student devices at once, displayed on a single screen
Locking iPads to a blank screen while giving instructions
Locking an entire class or individual students into a specific app
Managing small (ad hoc) groups of student devices
Apple Classroom is ideal for elementary classrooms or any classroom that doesn’t frequently require internet access.
JAMF Teacher
JAMF Teacher is a newer application for Bend-La Pine teachers and offers more restrictive controls than Apple Classroom. With JAMF Teacher, you can create a pre-determined digital lesson that allows access to specific websites and applications while blocking all others.
Use the instructions linked here to create your first JAMF Teacher lesson plan. JAMF Teacher is particularly well-suited for secondary classrooms that use online curricula.
For best results, we encourage both applications to be accessed from your iPad, rather than your computer.
“We are excited to have our School Resource Officers and Deputies back working back in your schools with you this week. Please review the district’s SRO/SRD point of contact information and phone roster located in the Safety Resource share drive and reach out to us with any questions regarding the SRO program.”
Safety Training:
Based on feedback our team has received, we are excited to provide opportunities for safety related professional development in the new school year. We are working on a survey that we will send out in a couple of weeks that we would like your feedback on the things you as administrators need to support the safety programs in your schools.
We will be asking you to identify one administrator on your team that will be the “go to” person for safety in your school. We will then be selecting 4 days that work for those identified individuals to meet with us, your campus monitors, and the SROs to work together on those identified training areas.
More to follow in a couple of weeks, but we wanted to get this on your radar so that when we send the survey out, it doesn’t blindside you to the request to select that individual. Please take time to think about areas of training you’re interested in receiving (i.e. reunification process, incident command for emergencies, standardizing campus monitor roles and responsibilities, etc.)- the more information we get from you, the better we can serve your needs!
Thank you for all you continue to do to keep our schools safe, and we look forward to working with you as the school year begins.
Moving into the new school year the sustainability position is changing. Jackie Mueller-Wilson has taken a job with Deschutes County Solid Waste as a Community Outreach Coordinator. She will have some connection with the schools because of her position, mainly for support of the Green Team.
The sustainability position has been refined, going forward we will be concentrating on three main objectives:
Waste reduction across the district.
A lunch waste/composting/recycling system for elementary schools
A recycling program for secondary schools
The main focus this year is put our efforts into what we do as a district for sustainability. If we thrive on sustainability as staff, this will carry over to make the students thrive. The sustainability position will also support the Green team initiative and also the SEM’s (Strategic Energy Managment) program. Please continue with the Green Leadership Coalition through your schools and once the position is hired, we will work on the best way to support the Coalition. Best guess will be October to see the position filled.
Please reach out with any questions, I will do my best to answer or find someone that can, thanks
As a reminder, each inclusion EA in your building is issued a device (iPad or laptop) and needs to have read only access to Synergy SE, so they can review student IEPs. Please check with your inclusion EAs and have them confirm that their Synergy SE access is working. If not, please submit a help desk ticket to ensure they have access. Thank you!
Special Education Staffing Update:
Each year, learning specialists provide our administrative team needs assessment, which help us staff your buildings. We believe we have a good staffing plan given the available resources. At this point, we have used all our staffing allocation to hire learning specialists, inclusion EAs, and other specialists. This includes already using 50% of the discretionary budget to hire inclusion EAs for the year. Before we look at any other staffing, we will need to wait until after we can verify all student enrollments, which should be within the first 5-10 days of school. After that, we will create a plan to support the sites with unexpected needs. Please remember that you can utilize your 70 hours (the “high needs” line item in your school budget) worth of funds to get a substitute. If you do end up using this option, it would be important to communicate with our team.
Thank you and I hope you have a great start of the year.
High School Only
From Jackie: Please share this with your Activities Directors, the advisors who oversee your environmental clubs, green team leaders and your CTE and science teachers. HS students are interested in increasing renewables and learning more.
Power Your Future: Inspire your students to lead clean energy solutions
The U.S. Department of Education has launched the Power Your Future Challenge — the second challenge in its annual CTE Momentum series to prepare high school students for rewarding careers and increase access to career and technical education. The Department invites teams to submit action plans that will advance the use of clean energy in local schools and communities.
To get started on the challenge, teachers and community partners can explore the available resources to learn more about clean energy and how teams can develop action plans to impact their communities. Potential entrants can also preview the submission form. Submissions are due by November 19, 2024. Up to 10 winning teams will receive an equal share of the $50,000 prize pool.
TAG ICCL at MS: Contact Stephen if you are having any issues finding an ICCL to take on TAG in your building.
Calendar
September 9: Students who have not yet showed up to school should be no-showed
September 10: MS and HS Principal meeting @ MVHS 8:00-9:30
Where in the World
Last week we highlighted Julie Stroinski, Principal at Sky View Middle School, who selected Green Bay, Wisconsin as her happy place. (Editor’s note: Go Chiefs!)
This week we are highlighting Donna Servignat, Principal at Summit High School, who selected her kitchen in her new home! “…this is my happy place. I love cooking, gathering around the dinner table, hosting gatherings. Loving my new place and settling into a new happy kitchen!!!”
Thanks for sharing your Happy Place with us Donna!
Please email a picture and brief description of you Happy Place to Katie or Stephen!
