November 30, 2023

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If you are looking for a quick and easy staff spark, try out the idea below. La Pine had this going before break and Amanda has since found some good ones for December online. Happy swapping!

Do Now:

  • SLGGs are due tomorrow! Here is a link summarizing the SLGG uploading into UKG.
  • For our ICCL/Admin training on Tuesday, please print 8 copies of the Goals and Activities Page of your School Design Plan to bring with you. During our time together, you will share your goals with other schools as well as how you arrived at the activities you have chosen. Schools will share ideas and give feedback to one another which may cause you to make changes or add new activities to your list.
  • Complete your SIF Budget (down to $0) if you haven’t already!
  • Schedule a time between now and January for your DEI ICCL member to present to staff (see below for details)
  • Make sure to include us (Tammy and Lisa) in your staff/family newsletters.

Reminders:

New Notes:

From Dave re: State Assessments: Below is information regarding Oregon’s state testing notices and forms that we are required to provide to families. One change this year is the SEED survey is required to be made available to all students in grades 3-11. There is a SEED notice and opt-out form that is separate from the OSAS notice and form. You will see that the opt-out process is much more relaxed for SEED. At a minimum I would recommend posting documents on your school’s website and providing a link in a newsletter.  

  • OSAS 30-Day Notice and Opt-Out Forms for 2023-24: Per ORS 329.479, “At least 30 days prior to the administration of statewide summative assessments, a school district or public charter school must send to parents and adult students a notice about the statewide summative assessments.” This statute also requires ODE to “establish a form to excuse a student from taking a statewide summative assessment.” Based on the 2023-24 testing windows, districts and public charter schools must distribute the 30-Day Notice on or before March 4, 2024 for grades 3-8.
  • Forms: ODE has updated the combined 30-Day Notice and Opt-Out Forms in English, Spanish, and 12 additional languages for the 2023-24 academic year. All forms are published as both fillable and non-fillable PDFs within the “Forms” menu on the Test Administration page. Additional information is available in section 5.3 of the Oregon Test Administration Manual (TAM). The TAM and forms and many other resources are available here. https://www.oregon.gov/ode/educator-resources/assessment/Pages/Assessment-Administration.aspx
  • SEED Survey, Notice, and Opt-Out Form for 2023-24: In 2020-21, 2021-22, and 2022-23, schools and districts chose whether to offer the SEED Survey to their students. Beginning in 2023-24, in compliance with HB 2656, districts must make the SEED survey available to all students in grades 3-11 who are enrolled in Oregon public schools or programs. SEED notification and opt-out forms must be shared at least 5 days prior to administering the survey.
    • The SEED Survey gathers data from students statewide, in grades 3-11. The content of the survey varies by grade level. The survey measures student perceptions in four core constructs: • Access to learning resources • Opportunity to learn • Self-efficacy • Sense of belonging. More information on the SEED survey can be found on the SEED survey webpage.

From Curriculum and Instruction:

  • Life and Career Readiness: Please share these resources in your staff memo. Wayfinder has some great resources for Community Connection. Click on this link to get the directions on how to access the resources in Wayfinder’s Collections and the direct links. 
  • Update on Language Arts Adoption: EL Education by Imagine Learning is our finalist (not yet adopted) for English Language Arts Curriculum. Currently, we have 28 teachers teaching modules and providing feedback on implementation and professional learning needs. In January we will recommend to the board and then have a month to collect additional feedback. We will go back to the board in February to present feedback and ask for board approval moving forward. 
  • Winter DIBELS Schedule (check your scheduled date)
  • Upcoming Professional Learning: Here are a few dates next week where classroom teachers may be out of the building for professional learning:
    • 12/4- Math Leadership Academy -12-4 at Miller Elementary (Teachers from North Star and Miller)
    • 12/5-Co-Learning Studio -ALL  day at Pine Ridge (only teachers at Pine Ridge)
    • 12/7- Literacy Lab for 1st and 3rd year new hires-12:00-3:15 (Teachers from across the district)
    • 12/4- Admin/ICCL meeting -3:15-5:15 -Jewell Cafeteria
    • 12/7- Kindergarten Innovation and Design Team meeting- 4:00-6:00. Boardroom
  • RGR Access for Administrators: All elementary administrators now have school-level administrator accounts created in Really Great Reading (RGR). This empowers you to take a closer look at classroom data for your school, making it easier to track and support student progress. To get started, follow these steps to access your school-level administrator account:
    • Navigate to the RGR login screen at https://playground.reallygreatreading.com/login/
    • Click the ‘Trouble logging in?’ link, which will allow you to create a password for your account
    • Enter your district email address and click OK
    • Open the email from Reading Playground that is immediately sent to you to find the access code and input it into the RGR login page
    • Follow the on-screen prompts to create your password
    • Once back on the RGR login screen, enter your email address and password to log-in

Medical Moment:

  • How to Register for CPR/First Aid Training/Renewal Course for BLS Staff
    • UKG > My Info (drop down menu, 3 stacked lines upper left side, above your initials) > My Career > My Learning > Access Learning (upper right side) > Training (top black menu bar) > Courses > First Aid (on right side) > Click on First Aid Link > Click on green Enroll Now button
    • Online Course: Once staff have registered for the CPR/First Aid course, staff will receive an email with a link for the online course portion of the training. (If you do not receive a link within the next business day, please check your junk email. If it is not in your junk email, please email Michelle Spetic at [email protected])
    • In-Person Skills Training: Once the online portion of the training is completed, staff will receive a Google form to sign up for the 20 minute in-person skills training.
    • Certification Card: Staff will receive an email with your CPR/First Aid certification card within 1-2 business days after completing the in-person skills class.
    • List of Certified CPR/First Aid Trained Staff at Your Site: Stephanie Bend sends out quarterly reports to all schools that include cpr/first aid certified school staff names.
  • OAR 581-022-2220 –Each school shall have, at a minimum, at least one staff member with a current first aid/CPR/AED card for every 60 students enrolled, as set by ORS 339.345, and 342.664 and who are trained annually on the district and building emergency plans. Emergency planning will include the presence of at least one staff member with a current first aid/CPR/AED card for every 60 students for school-sponsored activities where students are present. (This includes field trips.)

From the Office of DEI:

  • Upcoming Dates:
    • Thurs, Dec 7th: First night of Hanukkah.  Please avoid scheduling events this evening.  Also, there is a public Menorah lighting at the Old Mill the evening of Dec. 7th—details here.  Please consider attending and/or encouraging your staff to attend if interested in supporting this community celebration.  
    • Tues, Dec 12th: Our Lady of Guadalupe Feast Day.  This is a holiday celebrated by many within the Latino/Hispanic Catholic community in particular.  For your awareness and scheduling, this includes evening church activities that many of our families attend.  
  • Family Liaison Team: Here is the updated information about our team of linguistically- and/or culturally-specific Family Liaisons: English version, Spanish version.
  • DEI ICCL Representatives: Don’t forget to connect with your school’s DEI representative about presenting to your ICCL team between now and January sometime.  See Kinsey’s email for details or reach out if you’d like to connect!  

HR Moment:

  • Performance Module: Goals For Certified Staff
    • All certified staff were expected to submit goals through UKG by December 1.  If you haven’t engaged with your staff to complete this task, please do so the week of December 4th.
    • Classroom teachers are required to submit SLGG goals and their UKG form is organized as such
    • Everyone else is prompted to submit goals but are not asked to submit SLGGs
      • Jennifer Hauth has emailed a goal template for Student Success staff for them to copy, complete and upload to their UKG goal form
      • Josh Marks has provided a goal template for Speech staff to do the same.  All Speech teachers are now pointing to building administrators for performance related tasks (goals, mini/formal, self-reflection and summative evaluations) 
    • If a staff member has not been provided with a template from someone who oversees their program, then they are to follow the instructions within UKG to provide their own personal goals for the year
  • Upcoming optional virtual performance drop in sessions: Monday, 12/4,  from 10:00 am – 11:00 am (Click here to join the meeting)
  • IMPORTANT: Evaluation and Non Renewal Reminder
    • If you have a Probationary 3 or Temporary 3 staff member of concern, this is another reminder that you should have already entered into the Focused Performance Review process with that person AND emailed [email protected].  Here is another method of viewing the P3/T3 staff that you are responsible for.  

Care Solace and Winter Break Messaging: Some administrators have asked for accounts for Care Solace in the past but we are now creating accounts for All admin. This week you will receive an email from Care Solace asking you to create an account with a password. Currently, school counselors, student success, school psychologists and nurses are trained to do “warm handoffs” and to make referrals. If you would like to be trained, please let Jennifer know or one of your trained staff members can show you in a few minutes. Also, you will have access to the admin dashboard to see the reasons why students and staff at your school are seeking referrals for mental health support. Please continue to promote Care Solace (Spanish) via newsletters to families and staff often. 

Inclement Weather: HERE are the Inclement Weather Guidelines for the 2023-2024 school year, which detail the guidelines and procedures to be followed in the event of severe weather conditions. To stay informed and receive timely updates, please subscribe to BLConnect so that you can receive notifications via text. To learn more about how weather-related decisions are made, visit the BLS inclement weather page: https://www.bend.k12.or.us/district/news-events/alerts-updates

TLC Update: November 29th TLC Update about Wayfinder, movement, and reserving coding robots!

From IT: Google recently made a change to their sign in mechanism that better complies with federal CIPPA rules.  Beginning this week, they require school districts to verify any applications or websites that require students to sign in with Google. In readiness, our district performed this pre-verification work beginning last summer.  Because our primary methods for signing into applications are either Microsoft or Clever (for most student applications) our list for Google was very short. In fact, Google has never been our preferred sign in authentication provider for any application or service.  

In IT we anticipated that there would be users who would need direction to alternative log in methods. Unfortunately, there were two other factors that were more difficult for us to predict:

  1. Students and teachers were accessing our known licensed apps using Google regardless of the instructed preferred methods.  This is understandable, as there can be a bit of automatic reaction when you see “sign in with Google” vs lesser-known alternatives.
  2. There were a multitude of applications that were neither known by Instruction or IT in use in our schools. These applications were not pre-verified.

I hope that this helps many folks understand the situation and I would encourage you to review the preferred log in methods for essential applications that you use in your classroom or position. If this method is not known to you, reach out for support in the following order:

  1. Check with a colleague who also uses the application.
  2. Look for guidance from training materials or the Instructional Tools website.
  3. Reach out to an instructional coach or the IT Help Desk.

Finally, there are some limited examples where we may need to temporarily enable Google Sign On. If you feel you have something that requires immediate attention, please contact Scott McDonald.

New to Sharezies: Question Prompts to Generate Gratitude (Thanks Heidi!)

From Tammy and Lisa: Safety Net Family Night information will be coming soon so you can invite your 4th and 5th grade families. Look for it in next week’s blog!

Important Dates

  • Dec. 5, (3:15-5:15): Admin and ICCL Training, Jewell Elementary Cafeteria,
  • Dec 4, 5, 11, 13: Dates that Tammy will be at bargaining
  • Dec 12 (3:30): TAG Meeting- Meeting Link Here
  • Dec 15: Tammy out
  • Dec. 18-January 1: Winter Break—See you all back in 2024!

And finally…

If you need a way to wind down and remember all the great goodies you had last week with family, take a listen to chef and author Bryant Terry as he guides a visualization to connect with our ancestors by appreciating our families’ traditional foods. The exercise starts at 1:50 and ends at 8:00. Give a listen and maybe put the Happiness Break podcast on your list! (Click on the picture to get things rolling)

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