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
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:
- 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 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. (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