Month: September 2024

Cheers to Jesse, Erich, Calah the Office Manager, and their team over at Jewell Elementary—the 50th birthday celebration was an amazing event tonight! I was so amazed at all the former staff and students who came from near and far to check out the school, including the first principal 50 years ago, Bill Scott! (Small world–he was my advisor in my admin program 21 years ago!) It was such a special time for so many people. Nice work Jaguars!

From Tammy

Sharezies: The “Sharezies” document has been updated with another sample “Care” referral form, this time from Elk Meadow. This is a document that a teacher would use to request some

Pine Ridge Student Voice Council: Want an idea to grow your student voice input? Check out this note in Pine Ridge’s Staff Newsletter about their Student Voice Committee. There is a link to an information packet and application that clearly outlines the purpose and plan that PRE has for incorporating student voice into their practice. Thanks for sharing Nichole and Ned!

Pine Ridge Stuent Voice Committee: Below is the link to the information and applications that students/families will need if they are interested in applying for a spot on the Student Voice Committee. This is for 3-5 students. 3-5 teachers please send this link out as soon as possible via your classroom newsletters or your preferred communication system.

Dear Pine Ridge Families,

In an effort to have student voice more present in decision making at Pine Ridge, we are forming a student voice committee. The committee members, selected from grades 3rd-5th, will submit applications to be part of this committee. Below is a link to more information and the applications. If you have any questions, please contact Mr. Myers at [email protected]. Click here for the link to the information.

Topics of Interest/Problem of Practice: Here is a link where you can write down a topic of interest that you would like some thinking partners around. Some of the topics may be solved quickly here by your collaborative skills and ideas and some may make it to collaboration at a horizontal meeting.

To costume or not to costume–that is the question: Here is a link where you can let each other know what you are doing to adjust or not any costume celebrations. As a friendly reminder, should you choose to do costumes, we want to adhere to having respectful costumes as part of the celebrations. Here is a pre-made slide deck and a poster for teachers to discuss with students the way to celebrate appropriately.  Equity Coaches can support these conversations if needed.

Important Links

• September 11th Elementary TLC Update
• Topics of Interest/Problem of Practice–list them here!

Notes from our Team:

Tracy Howk in IT: This is last minute, but we just got work this class is in jeopardy of canceling, so please pass it on to your staff!

HDESD is putting on a free AI conference for educators on October 11. Dean says there’s sub pay available for those who want to attend. They’re looking for more participants to sign up or they’ll have to cancel, which is a bummer because the speaker lineup sounds great. The timing might also be handy as we’re launching MagicSchool AI in BLS.  Registration ends OCT 1. Register here!

From Scott Mc in IT: 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 1^st through November 30^th. 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.

From Dave VanLoo, Director of School Improvement:

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.

BLP Testing Schedule 2024-25

Major Tests & Surveys 2024-25

Synergy MTSS Module Update. 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. 

Dart

OSAS Portal

Bus Moments from Kim and Tina:

Students coming back to school. When we need to return a student to school (ex. no parent present at stop in the afternoon), we will be returning the student back to school, but it will be in the bus loop, not the front entrance/parent. Our buses are too big to fit in these front door loops- we did $20,000 + damage trying to get into a school yesterday afternoon 😕. Our routers will call the office and let them know when the buses arrive.

Guest Riders: Students who are not routed on a particular bus, cannot ride that bus. This includes if they bring a note from home saying they can go to Sally’s house for a play date. Caveat, if they ARE routed to the bus, they CAN get off at a different stop with a friend as long as they have a note from the school or from home.

We will be adding these tags to all kinders backpacks within the next 2 weeks. Red for RED kinders (don’t let off without a parent there), green for GREEN kinders (can be let off without a parent). The tags have first name, last initial, stop information and student ID#. We will also be notifying families of this, so they keep it on the backpack. 

There may also be a few kiddos (Grades 1-5)that we keep an “extra eye on” that will also have a RED tag. This will just help alert drivers to make sure they are getting off at the correct stop. Schools can expect to see us up in the bus loop putting these on kinders in the afternoons. Hopefully this will be helpful in getting them on the right buses and off at their homes 🙂

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. 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)

From Jennifer Hauth, re: Wayfinder’s Waypoints. Waypoints, the initial summative assessment for students will be live in Wayfinder from September 15^th through November 15th.  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 12^th through June 13^th for students.

Waypoint Guide K-2. Waypoint Guide 3-5

From Michell Spetic, Nurse on Special Assignment: OHA / ODE has changed the Communicable Disease Guidance for Schoolsguidelines 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)

Here 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:

Action Items

• Share HDESD AI conference info with your staff ASAP–Deadline is Oct 1

Important Dates

• October 1: Admin/ICCL Meeting–Ed Center Board Room, 3:00-4:30
• October 15: Horizontal Meeting at La Pine Elementary, 3:00-5:00 (La Pine and Juniper host) Please allow extra time for travel, depending on where you are located it could take 45 min to get there. Please do your best to be on time.
• Conferences: Oct 29–3:15-7:15, Oct 30–3:15-7:15, Oct 31–7:15-3:15
• Work Day: October 30, 7:15-3:15
• October 30: Administrator EL training–all day, exact time and location TBD
• October 31: Safe School Trainings need to be done by today
• November 11: Veteran’s Day–No School

And finally…click on the diagram below to see the details of how to buffer yourself from burn out.

From Tammy

Classified Stakeholder Voice: This year, we are working on increasing stakeholder engagement and voice of all our staff. While we have systems in place to get certified input (ICCL teams, schedule building input, MTSS, etc,) ways in which we gather classified voices are not as developed. How are you making sure you are giving classified staff an avenue to engage and share their voice in your building this year?

After School Clubs: Could you please let me know if you have after school clubs that are run by school staff? I only know of 2 schools (TR, JUN), and need to know if there are more. We are currently in the process of figuring out how you can accurately pay the staff to run the clubs, as “time sheeting” them is no longer an option. At the moment, these clubs are put on hold until this is resolved (which we anticipate being very soon). If you don’t have clubs you pay staff to do, you can ignore this. If you want to start, please wait until this is resolved and move forward with the new guidance.

For Horizontal on Tuesday: Please take a moment before our horizontal meeting on Tuesday to reacquaint yourselves with your school design plans. Don’t do anything to them yet, as we will be talking about them on Tuesday. We will also be focusing on them at our next site visits and how they are a guiding document for your year long PD work in your schools. Pro Tip: Book mark the link above to help you save time in accessing them. Note: We will be coming out with SLGG guidance and sample goals for you soon.

Another fun opportunity for your kids: The fire station wants you! You can print this flyer to put on your community board advertising a community open house this next week at the north station. Bend Fire and Rescue would love to see elementary school tours resume. They trailed off sharply after the pandemic, but fire stations are ready to host classes again. These visits can provide valuable learning experiences about fire safety and the role of firefighters. To schedule a tour, call 541-322-6300.

Important Links

• September 11th Elementary TLC Update

Notes from our Team:

From Kinsey–Policy, Advocacy, Equity

Advertising Practices: *Action Needed*. 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.

From Dave Hood, District Athletic Director: Hello—If you could please put this information in your next family newsletters that would be appreciated. The information is timely and impacts elementary students who attend our athletic events. Thank you!

From Scott in Technology: Do you know about Managed Apple ID’s?

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.

From Stephen DuVal re: TAG. 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.

Side Note from Tammy: Last week you were asked to fill out the information here. Admin TAG lead and TAG ICCL I know some of you are still hiring your ICCLs. If you know who it will be, but are finishing up the hiring process, please write their name and write “in progress” beside it. Thanks for the idea Nichole!

From Sean in Student Services: Hungerford Online:

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.

Action Items

• Let Tammy know here if you run any after school clubs
• Review 23-24 School Design Plans before Horizontal on Tuesday
• Sign up here for the Advertising and Money training. Administrator and additional or support staff who are involved in receiving or approving advertisement requests and funds
• Put this information in next family newsletter
• Sign into district devices with your district Managed Apple ID, not your personal one
• Fill out TAG ICCL with more than TBD please (then Stephen knows who to invite!)

Important Dates

• September 24: Horizontal Meeting at High Lakes Elementary, 3:00-5:00 (High Lakes and Amity host)
• September 26. Drop by and celebrate 50 years of Jewell Elementary! 5:00-7:00
• October 1: Admin/ICCL Meeting–Ed Center Board Room, 3:00-5:00
• October 15: Horizontal Meeting at La Pine Elementary, 3:00-5:00 (La Pine and Juniper host) Please allow extra time for travel, depending on where you are located it could take 45 min to get there.
• October 30: Administrator EL training–all day, exact time and location TBD
• October 31: Safe School Trainings need to be done by today

And finally… fall arrives this Sunday! Here is something yummy you could make to get you in the fall spirit! Recipe here!

From Tammy

Another 2 resource to share with staff: Here is a cool connection from the City of Bend, about Stormwater Educational Resources for teachers and classes. Check it out here!

Also, the High Desert Museum has moved their Oregon Encounters field day from spring to this fall! If your school has participated in this in the past, you don’t want to miss this! Check it out here!

Mark your calendar: Wednesday, October 30, from 8:00-3:00, during the teachers’ work day for conferences, is our administrative training for EL. Please block this time out in your calendar now so you don’t forget and fill up your day.

Executive Director Forum: The posting for the other Executive Director has closed. Next week there will be screening interviews, with the final interviews taking place on Monday, September 23. Please mark your calendar for that evening (guessing 1 hour somewhere between 4:00-6:00) for the Elementary Admin forum where our elementary admin team gets to meet the candidates, hear them answer our questions, and fill out the input sheet.

Important Links

• September 11th Elementary TLC Update

Notes from our Team:

From Scott and Kayla: 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.

From Paul Dean: Over the summer, we updated our community use guidelines.  Walt Norris met with all of the custodians to review the expectations regarding access to elementary school playgrounds and middle school tracks (we are not opening high school tracks at this time).  Custodians have been instructed to leave one gate open 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. If you have not done so already, please make sure you identify the gate that makes the most sense to keep open. As always, these gates are to remain locked during the school day.

From the Governor: I signed a proclamation declaring the month of September 2024 as Attendance Awareness Month. I was joined by Oregon Department of Education (ODE) Director Charlene Williams, Senator Suzanne Weber, education advocates, and school district representatives.

“I am mission-focused on finding ways to improve educational outcomes for Oregon students, which means finding the cracks in our system that students may fall through,” Governor Kotek said. “We can’t provide quality education unless we make sure we get the kids to school. When a child is chronically absent, not only do they miss out on the daily learning they need to succeed, but schools aren’t able to provide services, support, or intervention.”

“We know that consistent attendance is key to student success. When students attend school regularly, they are more likely to learn, grow, and connect,” said Dr. Charlene Williams, Director of the Oregon Department of Education. “This initiative is a call to action for all of us—educators, parents, and community members—to prioritize attendance and to ensure that each and every student has the opportunity to thrive.”

The full text of the proclamation can be found here.

ODE has released a Social Media Toolkit, a resource designed to help education leaders, advocates, and community members increase school attendance awareness.

From Lisa: I attended a seminar on Chronic Absenteeism and they provided this tool for use in schools. It may be something to share with admin regarding protocols to use regarding this topic. I think the most impactful tool may be page 3, which is filled with a variety of questions that teams can grapple with as they try to address potential barriers. These are broken into four categories (data, modification, relationships, community).  Hope your first days have been wonderful! 

From Stephen DuVal, Jessica Scott: Please take a moment and add your school’s TAG ICCL teacher and admin to this list. We need to create the contact list of the district TAG team and need your help–thank you!

From Lisa Birk: This month, we will not be meeting as a district leadership team on September 18th. More on future times together will be shared in the coming days.

Additionally, this document, is important to bookmark, as it is the updated link to the Culture of Safety contact list, of who to contact for a variety of things throughout our district (drill tacking, to pest control, to immigration, and so much more).

From Julie Richards: Would you support your instructional educational assistants attending additional professional learning?  See dates below. Let me know here. 

In the Spring, we discussed options for implementing additional training for our instructional educational assistants.  We were able to offer an amazing two-day conference on August 29th and 30th.  The feedback was very positive!!  Additionally, we discussed offering training during 4 building SIW dates throughout the year.  The training would be offered from 2:00-3:15 on 9/25, 11/6, 12/4 and 2/5.  You would need to work with your educational assistants if this is outside their work hours to either trade time or you could have them fill out a timesheet (paid by the school) for the additional hours. 

From Payroll: Timesheet cutoff is this Sunday, September 15th.  All time and leave from 8/12-9/16 needs documented on your timesheet.  To help the process run as smoothly as possible, we need you to submit your timesheet no later than 11:00 pm on Sunday, September 15th.  This is the first critical step in the process of taking your hours from time worked to time paid. Thank you!

*Please note we are still performing maintenance and some leave balances and schedules may not be correct, please submit time/leave change requests for any leave that cannot be submitted. Please see the bottom of your paystub for correct leave balances. We have ongoing tech work occurring in UKG. As a result you may see inaccurate schedules, workdays, etc. please still submit your timesheet, you will be paid accurate contract pay.

From Transportation: Safety is of the utmost importance for our transportation department and we need your help with a safety issue that is popping up at a number of places. Please do not release students before 2:15. We schedule our buses to get to the schools a few minutes before the bell rings so they can line up without students running around. We have had reports from drivers that there are already students out and running around by the time they get there, which makes our drivers a little nervous as you can imagine. Thank you for your help with this.

Also, we need some help in finding a way to make kindergarten students more “visible” to our drivers, especially when there is a substitute driver. Is there a way you can help kindergarten students stand out, (put them in front of the lines for example)? We are in the process of creating tags for K student’s back packs; red tags for kinders that need an adult present to get off, and green tag for kinders that don’t. That will eventually help, but for now, it is tricky and we worry about missing a kiddo. Anything you can do to help with this is appreciated.

From Human Resources: Mostly pertains to secondary, but important to know 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.

Also from HR:  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:

1. Use a Computer: Please avoid completing courses on your phone. Using a desktop or laptop computer can help ensure the platform functions correctly.
2. Browser Choice: We recommend using Chrome when accessing SafeSchools. Other browsers may not be fully compatible with the platform.
3. Course Interaction: Avoid pausing or skipping forward in videos. Engage fully with each module and ensure you answer any questions that appear promptly.
4. 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.
5. 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. (October 31)

From Sean Reinhart: Please see this 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. (Side note from Tammy: This aligns with our master SIW calendar, being the days marked with an asterisk and also includes, your co-curricular teachers as well).

For your parent newsletter:

Cellphones – A Guide for Parents and Caregivers 

By age 11, about half of children in the U.S. own a smartphone. These devices become a constant companion in the lives of preteens and teens – a source of connection, creativity, and, yes, distraction and potential risk. 

See this parent and caregiver guide from Common Sense Media with tips to help preteens and teens use their phones safely and responsibly. 

The guide also includes tips for determining when your kid is ready for a cellphone. 

Teléfonos celulares – Una guía para padres y cuidadores

A los 11 años, aproximadamente la mitad de los niños en Estados Unidos poseen un teléfono inteligente. Estos dispositivos se convierten en un compañero constante en la vida de los preadolescentes y adolescentes: una fuente de conexión, creatividad y, sí, distracción y riesgo potencial.

Consulte esta guía para padres y cuidadores de Common Sense Media (Medios de sentido común) con consejos para ayudar a los preadolescentes y adolescentes a utilizar sus teléfonos de forma segura y responsable.

La guía también incluye consejos para determinar cuándo su hijo está listo para usar un teléfono celular.

Action Items

• Calendar the EL training (10/30) and Executive Director Forum (9/23)
• Complete safety survey
• Fill out Admin TAG lead and TAG ICCL
• Let Julie know if you support EAs and upcoming PD
• Timesheet cutoff Sunday Night!
• Help Transportation out (no kids before 2:15 and identify K-kiddos)
• Include cell phone tips in next parent newsletter

Important Dates

• September 15: Payroll Cutoff—timesheets and approvals for this last period (August 13-Sept 15) are due today!
• September 15: Cutoff date for enrollment for benefits!
• September 15: Black Girls in Suburbia and follow up panel at the Tower Theater, 1:00-3:00
• September 24: Horizontal Meeting at High Lakes Elementary, 3:00-5:00 (High Lakes and Amity host)
• October 15: Horizontal Meeting at La Pine Elementary, 3:00-5:00 (La Pine and Juniper host) Please allow extra time for travel, depending on where you are located it could take 45 min to get there.
• October 30: Administrator EL training–all day, exact time and location TBD
• October 31: Safe School Trainings need to be done by today

And finally… (turn up the volume and push play!)

As I make my way around to see you all, it is so encouraging to hear the stories of what a great start this week has been. You and your staffs are a huge reason why! Creating welcoming and inclusive spaces for everyone, clearly communicating expectations and information, and sharing the joy of learning with the students and families contribute to the success. Thank you for a job well done!!

From Tammy

Reminder: As you are planning out your events for the year, please remember, for the 2 evening events that you are requiring staff to attend (Open House does not count if you adjusted your hours that day to include OH in the work day), please remember that you need to notify them at least 60 days in advance. Without the notification, the event becomes optional. So plan them now if you haven’t already and communicate it out to your staff. It can sneak up on you if you don’t!

Fall Conferences: There have been some questions about fall conferences and the conference/work schedule. Below is the work/conference days if you have not already shared those dates out with staff. Per the contract, this does not include the full work day prior to conferencing, however BEA was part of designing this calendar and knows we may need a Memorandum of Understanding for fall conferences.

• SIW the week prior to conferences is teacher prep time
• Tuesday, Oct 29. Kids attend school. Conferences 3:15-7:15
• Wednesday, Oct 30, Teacher work day 7:15-3:15, Conferences 3:15-7:15
• Thursday, Oct 31, Conferences 7:15-3:15–everyone home in time for trick-or-treating!

Rearranging things: Just a heads up, that I am moving the “Action Items” section to after the information from our teams. It seems that I can put more there to simplify things for you if I call out actions in the team notes, but you need those for context first. Please let me know if this does not work for you. Ultimately, it is what is easiest for you!

Important Links

• Tier 1 Expectations
• Personal Electronic Device Expectations in English, en Español
• School Issued iPad Expectations
• Assurances for Learning
• Sample Main Schedule with Assurances
• Priority Standards (Critical Areas of Focus)
• Investigations Powerpoint is now in the slide decks above.
• August 28^th Elementary TLC Update!

Notes from our Team:

From Scott and Kayla in Safety : AQI:Please review our district’s Air Quality Index (AQI) protocols and decision-making resources on the Safety site of our staff portal. We have added an  AQI FAQ document that you can review and share with your staff regarding air quality and our protocols.

As a reminder, it should be the school administrator(s) making the decision on whether students should be participating in recess, PE, and outdoor activities during the school day, based off this guidance, and not individual staff members. Please reach out to Scott or Kayla if you have any questions, or need support in your air quality decision making process.

SROs. 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.

From Andrea Wilson, HR Director, Benefits and Risk Management:

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!

From Jessica Houser, BO Operations Manager, Accounts Payable and Payroll

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!

From Eric Powell, Ted Helton, and Jason Westmoreland, re: Disciplinary Action in Synergy

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 Eric, Jason, or Ted by email. l

Walt Norris, Director of Custodial and Sustainability, re: Sustainability. 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 are thriving in the way we are sustainable, it will support our students thriving as learners too. The sustainability position will also support the Green Team initiative and also the SEM (Strategic Energy Management) 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!

From Jennifer Hauth in Social Emotional and Mental Well Being:

Student Success: 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 1^st. 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 15^th through October 18^th and the final summative assessment for students will be open May 12^th through June 13^th 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.  

From Scott McDonald, IT Director, re: device management tools

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.

From Sean Reinhart, Student Services

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.

From Josh Marks, Student Services, re: 504 Coordinators

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.

Action Items

• Choose a mandatory 504 training and put it on your calendar
• Make sure all inclusion EAs have access to Synergy and IEPs on their district issued device
• Share Apple Classroom and JAMF with teachers
• Meet with a team (ICCLs, teachers, etc.) to determine if you are using Waypoints this year in Wayfinder
• Refresh yourself with AQI limits for inside/outside play–smoke has started to roll back in!
• Make sure your office managers have initiated any outstanding PAs in UKG by 9/9
• Share conference/work dates and times with staff if you have not done so already
• Notify staff of evening events at least 60 days out

Important Dates

• September 6: In bed by 7, thoroughly exhausted!
• September 15: Payroll Cutoff—timesheets and approvals for this last period (August 13-Sept 15) are due today!
• September 15: Cutoff date for enrollment for benefits!
• September 24: Horizontal Meeting at High Lakes Elementary, 3:00-5:00 (High Lakes and Amity host)

And finally… if interested, don’t delay, registration closes 9/12!