Do Now:
- District Snow Day Messaging: Please refer to Scott Maben’s message about the new dates at the end of the year. Go over this again with staff sometime next week during a staff meeting.
- Welcome Back Survey: We are working on plans for the Welcome Back event for the 2024-25 school year, to be held on Tuesday, August 27, and would like to hear from employees on the preferred format. Please use THIS SURVEY to vote until Wednesday, Feb. 28 at 5 pm. The planning team is considering three options:
- A virtual meeting with school and department staffs gathering in their buildings to participate. This would last a little over an hour and may include a new interactive experience for participating teams.
- In person with all District staff together in one place, with District buses shuttling staff to and from the central gathering place. This may entail a commitment of up to three hours and include breakfast and employment-related vendors.
- A hybrid in-person/virtual event at multiple locations: For example: High school, middle school, elementary school, and support staffs each meet at separate schools, with a portion of the program being a virtual event to connect all staff, followed by an in-person program with a focus on interests specific to the level or group. This also could be a 3-hour event with breakfast and district buses shuttling staff to and from these four locations.
Reminders:
- CPI info update from last week: Sign up ASAP. We recommend you sign up for the “Nonviolent Crisis Intervention,includes Verbal Intervention”, the second selection on the page (standard program only) training, which can be done HERE. The cost will be $4349 and you have to pay to sign up, so you will need to use your building credit card. Once you have designated who will be trained, please notify April Diehl in the Student Services Office. She will provide you with an account code so your office manager can reimburse your school account. If you have any questions, please contact Sean Reinhart.
- TAG Testing Timeline: Please make sure these dates are on your radar and you have a plan for testing at your school.
- ECSE Information Update: Please refer to Colleen’s recent e-mail if you have questions regarding new processes related to ECSE transitions. Please review THIS GUIDANCE with your team as you make a plan for your site.
- Additional Student Services Staffing Requests: Some of you may be finding that you are coming to the end of your 70 hours of additional services supports. Remember- any requests for additional Student Services staff (including 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, the duration of the request, the plan to fade support, and the name of the 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.
- Wonders Reading Materials (stolen language from Pine Ridge staff letter): As we progress through this final year of instructing with Wonders curriculum there are a few moves to start planning for. Downtown is in the process of locating a purchaser to buy all teacher manuals and anthologies that are in good condition. At this time, we need to hold on to all TE’s and Anthologies. You should start sending home leveled readers after the close of a unit with your students. Come the end of the year, we are going to have a lot of material to organize. Please start sending the leveled readers home now after they have been used for this year’s instruction.
New Notes:
Curriculum, Instruction and Systems (Julie Walker): Here is the schedule for Educator Network Day on February 28th. Please see the far-right hand column for locations for administrator support at each of the classes being offered.
From Life and Career Readiness (Jenny White): This week’s highlight in Wayfinder is encouragement which can be found in the Activity Library in Wayfinder.
- Encouragement Relay (K – 3)
- Encouragement Wings (2 – 6) In this exercise you might want to assign partners. Make sure every student will get a set of wings.
February 21st Elementary TLC Update: This week’s update includes:
- EL Education adoption update
- 1st grade teachers – sign up for an early literacy classroom visitation with Julie
- Forefront Dashboards are here
- Bullying collections from Wayfinder
- and more!
UKG Performance Module Tips & Tricks: The slide below has been added to the Performance Training – January 31 2024 slide deck.
From Tammy and Lisa:
We are looking forward to taking some time to review the data that we received as a result of our recent survey. This will be part of our meeting on Tuesday. You can use this time to start to think about how you will roll this information out to your ICCL team and make plans for PD.
You also should now have access to your Youth Truth information. We will have some dedicated time in the future to look through these data but if you want to start planning now, please feel free. If you don’t see an easy way to access the information in your account, please reach out to Dave.
Below is our agenda for our upcoming site visits. This is a first step as we begin the process of staffing for next year. Start thinking about your needs moving forward so we can understand your vision as we meet together.
Important Dates
- Feb 27: 3:00-5:00. Elementary Leadership, at North Star Elementary
- Feb 28: Ed Network Day (see details above from Julie)
- Mar. 1: Education Foundation Grants are due: www.blpedfoundation.org
And finally…
Did you know that the longest jump observed by a snow leopard was more than 49 feet (15 meters), even longer than the length of an average school bus! Thursday 2/29 (Leap Day) is a great day to start practicing your leaping. The Paris Olympics are only 154 days away!