In keeping with our theme last week of supporting our little people who get dysregulated, we wanted to share a couple of graphics that show the impact a regulated adult can have on helping a dysregulated child recover more quickly. There is also a graphic that shows how a dysregulated adult can contribute to the problem. It’s a good reminder for us all, that adults can also become dysregulated. What are some tools, skills, ideas you have to share with your adults when they feel this way? Need some ideas? Please reach out!
Transportation Message: Elementary schools are releasing students early, making drivers nervous to pull into their spots. In turn, drivers want to leave earlier to get situated before students are on the sidewalk which costs $. No one needs to be released before 2:15. Kinders can be at 2:15, and the rest of the school at 2:15:30 🙂 We are not scheduled to leave before 2:23 and 8 minutes is plenty of time for the school to load.
Conferences: After consultation with BEA last year, we have landed on the following information regarding length of a conference. If a teacher has 25 or less students, their conferences need to be between 25-30 minutes to accommodate for transition times as needed (25 min gives time for a quick restroom break, time in case one goes longer, etc.). If a teacher has 26 or more students, their conferences can be 20 minutes, giving the teacher the ability to have a few longer ones as well as building in transition times if needed.
Reminder about personal leave – Just a reminder that personal days need prior approval and buildings cannot have more than 5% of their staff out on personal leave – that is about 2 teachers for most schools. You do the initial approvals, so please keep an eye out on this.
Info re: Wayfinder from Jennifer: Thank you all for your continued support of Wayfinder. I have drafted newsletter content for your families. You can find that here. Please remember that we are not using the terms “Social Emotional Learning” when speaking or promoting Wayfinder- please use “life and career readiness”. Here is the training deck from in-service week: K-5 Core Training
If you have implementation or wonderings about Wayfinder, please reach out to myself and/or our Program Manager- Diana Curtaz: [email protected]. 916.206.9784
Resources to support teachers with implementation:
- If your teachers want to learn more about Wayfinder, have them enroll in Wayfinder Academy (it is asynchronous).
- Here is a Collections Step-by-Step Guide + a Getting Started with Collections video.
- The link to Wayfinder’s Tech Support.
- Here is a Resource Guide with additional resources and support.
Need emergency EA Support Now? You have funds for that. All building discretionary budgets contain a line item titled “High Needs”. These dollars come directly from the Student Services discretionary account for buildings to use. The purpose of these funds is to support building administrators to quickly staff for students with high needs. The funds are available to use at your discretion for supplemental subs and equates to 70 hours of a substitute classified educational assistant. This is an annual allocation and the typical carryover (10%) rules will apply as with all other discretionary monies. These funds are only to support high-need students that you believe require additional staffing. Some other considerations when utilizing the high needs students discretionary funds:
- The high needs student discretionary funds are not exclusively tied to students on an IEP or 504 and can be used with any student
- Supplementary substitutes should never work directly with a high needs student. Rather, the substitute should fill-in for our trained staff that can work with high needs students
Additional Student Services Staffing Requests: Any requests for additional Student Services staff (included unfilled positions) need to come directly from building administrators and not from teachers. Each request will be reviewed by a team of Student Services administrators and level leaders for consideration. Some considerations when requesting additional student services staff:
- All high needs student discretionary funds (see above) must be spent first
- Prior to requesting additional staff, develop a plan for how the person will be utilized, duration of the request, plan to fade support, and the name of staff member facilitating the sub and plan implementation
- Any additional student Services staff requested via this process would need to directly serve students under the umbrella of special education (unlike the 70 hours above).
Suicide Prevention: As a part of our suicide intervention efforts for our Adi’s Act plan, suicide prevention trainings are required for our staff. All of our trained suicide risk screeners, which are typically your school counselors, school psychs, some nurses, and some SSC’s attend the ASIST (Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training) PD every 5 years. This year, ASIST will be offered on Nov. 2 and 3, which will be required for those who have never been trained. There will be two additional ASIST trainings offered in the winter and spring for those who need to recertify. School sites are responsible for sub coverage for staff who require it. For questions, please reach out to Jamie Gunter ([email protected])
Restorative Practices Training Opportunities: Click Here
From Lora: Years of Service Apples: In the coming days, your level leader will deliver the “years of service” apples to the appropriate building principals. Please find a few minutes in a staff meeting or at the start of an SIW to formally recognize the outstanding staff who have served our district for many years.
Also from Lora. Possible (Temporary) Changes to Supervision and Evaluation Requirements for Certified Staff. Paul Dean and I are working with Sarah Barclay on some temporary changes to the supervision requirements for certified staff who have contract status. Our hope is to help relieve some of the observation burden for our administrators. STAY TUNED! In the meantime, as we’re waiting to bring UKG fully on board for this process, you can complete observations using any tools you regularly use. This information can be uploaded into UKG at a later date.
Don’t Delay! Have your teachers apply for an Education Foundation Grant today!
From Skip and Dave: Principals – Leadership teams from each school are being asked to complete this survey so we can better understand how schools use and access student data. You are encouraged to discuss these questions as a leadership team and complete the survey as a group.
Survey questions are organized into groups with a number and a letter (e.g., 1a, 1b, 2a, etc.). Each number and letter combination (e.g., 1a) really is a multi-part question. If you answer the first question about the type of data, be sure to answer all follow up questions specific to those data. Please be as specific and descriptive as possible when answering these questions.
Please complete the survey by Wednesday, October 4. Contact Dave VanLoo with any questions about the survey.
Sustainability Advisor Position – SustainBLS There are still a few schools that do not have a staff Sustainability Advisor in place for the school year. The SustainBLS program is one of the ways ALL schools can make sustainability, stewardship and conservation the norm across our district. Through SustainBLS, a certified staff member takes on the role of the school Sustainability Advisor and works with a school green team. This team can be a class, a select group of students or an environmental club. Our first training of the year is next Wednesday from 4:30-6:00 in the Facility Development Office behind admin.
Walk and Roll Prizes Walk and Roll to school day is on October 4th this year. If your school wants to have some give aways stickers, please apply by September 27th to Street trust. Teachers should be encouraged to gather information about student transportation to assist BLS. There are tallys here that can be sent to sustainability coordinator, Jackie Wilson Admin via inner district mail.
Get There Challenge with Commute Options The Get There Challenge is an annual competition to encourage people who live or work in Oregon to drive alone less and use transportation options more. Running for two-weeks, October 1-15, the Challenge helps promote commuting by teams will competing for recognition and prizes by logging trips taken by bike, foot, carpool, vanpool, and transit and remote workdays. Your school can create a team and sign up here. Any member of your team can be the team captain, but there needs to be one for each team. Check out the great prizes, including a $1000 gift card for the winning team. There will be a special district prize for the team with the most trips logged.
Recycling 101 in Deschutes County Solid Waste With school in session, this is a perfect time to share with staff and review what can and cannot go in the blue co-mingle recycling carts in Deschutes County. Please note that plastic produce clamshells, coffee cups and copy paper reams are NOT Recyclable.
Total Building Energy Useage Remember to keep building energy use in mind at the end of the day and on weekends. The building automation system sets schools to unoccupied modes over the weekend. If you have any questions or concerns about your school facility, please contact [email protected]
Human Resources Update:
Classified Daily Break Requirements. This is a reminder to all administrators/supervisors regarding mandatory classified breaks/meals from Article 16.5 of the Collective Bargaining Agreement. Per the CBA, classified staff who are scheduled for more than six hours receive:
- a 15-minute paid morning break as close to the middle of the morning workday as possible (between the start of the workday and the 30-minute meal period)
- a 30-minute duty free (no students) meal period as close to the middle of the workday as possible, and
- a 15-minute paid afternoon break as close to the middle of their afternoon workday as possible
(You may view Article for 16.5 for breaks/meals for employees working less than 6 hours)
We understand current staffing challenges, but these breaks and meal periods must be arranged and scheduled per the contract. We ask that you double-check with your classified staff in the next week to confirm that they have written schedules and that those schedules include the appropriate break/meal times.
OSEA leadership is committed to supporting their members and will reach out to building/level leaders if they are notified that someone is not receiving their regularly scheduled breaks.
UKG Data. We anticipate checking in with school administrators next week to confirm the accuracy of staffing data within UKG. We’ll provide a google form for you to log incorrect staff in your My Teams view. We appreciate your patience as we continue to work through PAs and system updates.
Performance Evaluation Module. The district (Lora) and BEA are in discussions to modify the number of mini-observations and reduce the number of standards to be evaluated for all certified contract staff (probationary/temporary staff requirements won’t change as we must conform to ORS rules). We will likely have the same amount of mini’s for both on & off cycle staff. Stay tuned for more information on this.
In the meantime, please continue your normal classroom visits while we get ready to roll out the Performance Evaluation module in UKG. You’ll have the opportunity to enter prior mini’s once the new module is launched.
We are currently testing and making tweaks to the Performance module in preparation for an October rollout. We have to create a different profile for each certified group that has a unique evaluation rubric. We are prioritizing the classroom teacher rubric first as that is our largest group of certified staff. We’ll then move to Learning Specialists, Counselors, Student Success Clinicians, School Psychologists, TOSAs and Speech Pathologists.
Greetings from IT:
The following applies to personal devices only and not school issued student iPads.
Students have always been able to access Bend La Pine Schools digital applications from a personal device (such as a cell phone or desktop computer )while at home. This year, access from a personal device is still encouraged, but in the interest of security and data privacy, just a bit more challenging.
Students will need to complete multifactor authentication prior to accessing BLS applications on their personal device. Multifactor authentication adds a critical second layer of security before any student information is visible on a device that is not known by our organization. The steps to complete multi-factor authentication can be found on this link.
Printed as well as Spanish versions of these instructions are available from the Tier One Technology representative at each school.
It is important to note that the most efficient way to complete the steps for multi-factor authentication is by using a student iPad. We in IT would strongly encourage sending iPads home to complete the MFA process (especially for elementary age students).
The following BLS applications are commonly accessed by students from personal devices. Lexia, Dreambox, Clever, Canvas, Really Great Reading, Google Drive
New in Sharezies: Elk Meadow has also developed a PBIS handbook for the year. Take a peek steal some great ideas!
Important Dates!
- Sept 26, 8-11 Seesaw Training in the Board Room
- Sept 26, 3:00-5:00 Horizontal Meeting at Three Rivers School, 56900 Enterprise Dr in Sunriver. Notice the time change to 2 hours!
- Sept 27 Dreambox Launchpad Assessment due
- Sept 27 School-wide and Classroom Expectation in place
- Oct. 3, 3:00-5:00 ICCL/Admin Training–Location is still TBA–we are having a hard time finding a space to fit all schools—it may end up being virtual.
- Oct. 11, 1:45-3:15 Ed Network Training
- Oct 25-27. Tammy and Lisa out at a PBIS Leaders Conference