January 11, 2024

Do Now:

• Ed Network: Because we were unable to complete the training during Ed Network Day and all teachers need to know this information, we are asking that building leaders plan to do this during the next SIW on January 17th. If you already have something scheduled that can’t shift for that day, you can complete this with your staff on the 24th instead. If you hit any other snags along the way and need ideas to problem solve, please reach out to Tammy or Lisa. Please use this link for the slides from Kerry for the training.
• Follow Your Youth Truth Completion Percentage Here: The district has a goal of 100% staff participation and 75% families participating and there’s only a couple weeks left. You can make a positive impact in your return rates, by communicating with your families often and in different modes (newsletters, Seesaw, phone call reminder). Here is a “Cheat sheet” to help schools with survey implementation.
• Safe Schools Check In: Here is a video that you can use to track who in their building still needs to complete Safe Schools Trainings so these are completed by January 19th (remember- they were due on October 31).
• From the Business Office: If you used any Non-contract time over the holidays, those requests need submitted asap, the closing day for this pay period is January 14. Instructions for submitting requests can be found on the portal Employee-How to Use UKG__Requesting Time-off.pdf .
• TAG Night Reschedule: We are rescheduling our TAG night for next Wednesday night, January 17, from 6-7:30pm. Same time, same location, just a week later. See Kristy Knoll’s e-mail for a blurb you can share with your families.

Reminders:

• Office Staff training: Office staff (all of them) will train from 1-2:30 on January 17, March 6, April 17, and May 22. Please make a plan for coverage.
• Documenting in Synergy–Majors/Minors/Suspensions–Inputting discipline information into Synergy needs to be done within 24 hours of an incident and/or suspension.
• UKG refresher input: Please take this super brief survey to help us identify the greatest need for our training on the 31st.
• TAG Testing Timeline: Please make sure these dates are on your radar and you have a plan for testing at your school.
• Planning for subs? Consult the admin calendar here and avoid scheduling your building PD days on the days colored mauve.
• Title: Title School To Do List
  • Also, for Title, please don’t forget to get pre-approval before making your purchases and purchases should be aligned with your goals.
  • For your school design templates, please start working on the family engagement sections as well.
• Student Services:
  • Monthly REQUIRED inclusion EA Trainings: Contact Krista Hought or Stephanie Smith for info
  • Prevent, Teach, Respond information, PTR Facilitators Guide
  • MTSS Tier 3 process
• Counseling: School Counseling Blog
• Safety: Updated SRO List as of 1/2/2024.

New Notes:

Scheduling meetings from Erich: I came across this cool tool within Outlook because I was getting really tired of all the adds on Doodle. Hopefully this comes in handy. THIS DOC will show you how to create a poll with multiple dates and times. You can email to folks outside of BLP as well. 

From Curriculum, Instruction and Systems (Julie Walker):

• Please share with your staff:
  • Eastern Oregon is offering a science of reading course. It is advertised as a ‘lighter’ version of the LETRS training. Read here to learn more about this opportunity. If you are interested in signing up please fill out this survey by the end of the school day on Tuesday, January 16th. There are limited seats. Please reach out to Lindsley Gehrig with any questions.  The cost of this training will be covered by Bend La Pine. 
  • During the February 28th Educator Network Day is about sharing our practice with other educators- a powerful form of professional learning. If you have a topic and ideas to share, please sign up to be a facilitator.  You will be paid 4 hours at curriculum rate for your planning and preparation.  More information and sign up here.
• Please share in your next family newsletter: Community feedback opportunity for Language Arts curriculum materials. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1K3rRBQjzf24AXR-d1z-fwi1dL9kEO95GBQq-5ih-SL0/edit?usp=sharing
• From Jenny White (SEL): Here is a Wayfinder activity on courage that you can share with your staff. Click on this link to get the directions on how to access the resources in Wayfinder’s Activity Library. The direct links are on the last slide or found below. 
  • Kindergarten
  • 1^st – 2^nd
  • 3^rd – 5^th  

High Needs Student(s) Discretionary Fund Reminder:

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 who can work with high-needs students

Additional Student Services Staffing Requests: 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 (unlike the 70 hours above).

TLC Link Update: January 11^th Elementary TLC Update The Elementary Curriculum and Instruction website has been updated to provide more relevant information and resources to you. If you are interested in learning more about these changes, check out this video!

From HR: Now is a good time for building leaders to do a refresher on the UKG Performance module as you progress through your formal and mini-observations.  Below is a list of resources (this list can be found on the Performance & Evaluation Hub tab when you scroll down to the bottom of the page).

• Performance Module
  • UKG Performance Module Overview Document – Certified Staff
  • UKG Performance Evaluation Guide for District Administrators
  • Slides from the October 25 BLAST training
  • Link for 2022/23 Evaluation
  • edition_5_-_evaluation_manual_-_certified_teacher.pdf
  • Bend-La Pine Schools: Modified Evaluation System for Certified Staff, 2023-24
  • SLGG google form – Staff can either make a digital copy to complete or they can print and fill out a hard copy.  These can be uploaded into UKG (instructions to follow)
• Helpful tip – Please enter as much information as possible in your formal/mini observations as they are our official BLS Observation record of what you observed and the feedback you provided (in case we need to reference them years from now).  It is permissible to insert a link within the General Comments section of the observation entry if you utilized another google drive document as your primary repository of observation debriefs.

FAN Update from Dana Pedersen: FAN staffing has been a challenge this year due to resignations and leaves. Thank you all for your patience as I have adjusted staffing and most recently, made some changes in staffing assignments. I am committed to staffing our Dual Immersion schools with Spanish speaking Advocates. This has caused some shifts in assignments, as the last round of hiring yielded some great candidates, but none of them speak Spanish. Here is the current list of Advocates and their assigned schools. Two new Advocates are in the process of being hired now. Please don’t hesitate to reach out if you have any questions.  

From Jennifer Hauth: HERE are some upcoming training opportunities for supporting LGTBQ+ students and families, from the Oregon Family Acceptance Project that may be of interest.

From Tammy and Lisa:

Data Literacy: As you probably can tell, we are focusing on becoming more consistent using the data we collect this year. THIS DOCUMENT has an interesting graphic in the center that highlights a drastic decrease from expectations around data to actual data use. As we continue baseline training on our data tools, it makes sense to think about how training on the same topics will look in your school. We can’t expect use without modeling, training, and monitoring data fluency.

Lexia Update: One instructional/data tool we have in Lexia. Early this week, we were able to meet with our Lexia consultant to get updates about our school usage as well as tools to support implementation. We will talk more about our measurement tools in ELA during our Jan. 23 Horizontal. Remember, all students who are not at benchmark should be engaging in some level of Lexia in addition to teacher instruction. Here are a couple of documents to consider regarding implementation:

• Current school usage and progress updates
• School-level implementation outline (for your use and understanding)
• Classroom-level implementation outline (for your teachers)

Important Dates

• Jan. 15 No School in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
• Jan. 17: Office staff meeting 1:15-2:15 (plan for them to be away from 1-2:30)
• Jan 17: New Educator Network Day
• Jan. 23, 3:00-5:00 Elementary Leadership, at Buckingham Elementary
• Jan 31, All Admin PD at Perseverance Hall, 3:00-4:30
• Jan 31: Black history month kick-off celebration
• Feb. 8: Lunar New Year celebration/AAPI Family Night

And finally…