Idea to Consider:

To Dos:

WEDNESDAY ATTENDANCE: Yesterday was our first Wednesday where we took attendance and it was challenging for many students, families, and staff; thank you SO MUCH for your continued flexibility. Please make sure that you are taking attendance carefully for Wednesdays based on students who submitted your assigned 20 minute activity in Canvas, attended a support session, or connected with you via email/phone. We’ll once again be sharing in-depth information regarding attendance with our families on our upcoming school-wide communication (which we always send out to staff as an FYI).

Bits and Bobs:

SAFETY TEAM: Please continue to check the Safety Team folder linked on the blog for the most up-to-date safety team notes. We need all staff to be aware of all the items on this staff checklist document; please review and become familiar with its contents. Touch base with Wendy, Nole, Lauren, or any safety team member with questions.
FYI: The safety team has approved the evaluation team’s Limited In-Person Instruction (LIPI) plan for evaluation testing for students with SPED, ELL, speech, 504, etc. accommodations. Currently, we do not have any students in need of such evaluations, but when we do there is a safety plan in place. Also be aware that the Life Skills team is working on a safety plan for LIPI for the small cohort of Life Skill students. Once approved, we could have Life Skills students in the building for LIPI as early as the week of Oct. 5th.

RECORDING/POSTING: As you know we are asking that all lesson launches are recorded and posted to Canvas (for any absent students or students that want a reteach). Staff do not have to use the video in these recordings, audio only is fine.

CANVAS COACHES CORNER:
-Please review this slide presentation which shows students how to submit a google assignment into Canvas.  This is our Advisory lesson Monday.  You might consider making a practice assignment to try with your advisory kids on Monday.  
–Synergy and Canvas: Please DO NOT add grades into Synergy.  The district is hoping to have Synergy and Canvas syncing soon and by adding assignments into Synergy it will make the syncing very difficult.  A message from the school will be sent home to parents if the syncing is not done by the end of next week.  
–Office Hours: Wednesday, Sept. 30th Canvas coaches will hold office hours from 1:30-2:30 in Lisa’s WebEx room.  Stop by to have questions answered.  
–Drop in Q & A: TOMORROW (Fri, 9/24) at 8:00am.  Feel free to stop by Ingrid’s WebEx room tomorrow morning to get your pressing Canvas questions answered.  

DIGITAL TEAMS: One of the most helpful digital tools our (science) team discovered last spring is Microsoft Teams. When we were suddenly working from our own islands at home, our team quickly connected again through the app and started sharing documents, ideas, experiences, and fun gifs (of course!). This mode of communication actually brought us closer together despite being physically separated and it’s still our daily routine to say good morning each day to remind each other we are all in this together. This year we added 3 things – we all post 3 good things about our day before we sign off. It is so nice to end our days in a positive way and share our experiences with each other.

STUDENT HEALTH SURVEY: This year our middle school 6th and 8th graders (as well as 11th gr.) will be participating in this statewide survey. You may recall, this is the merge of two former state surveys (Oregon Health Teens and Student Wellness Survey). The window for this 30 minute, online, anonymous survey is Oct. 5 – 16. A passive parent permission letter (all students are opted in, unless a parent returns an opt-out form to the school) was sent out this week. We will do this survey during advisory. Date TBD as well as the link to access the survey.

SUBSTITUTES: Here is clarification for staff absences from HR.

Substitute Guidance for CDL:

• If a teacher is sick for one or two days there are a couple of options.  One, the teacher can do his/her best to get information and work out to students. If a teacher attempts to teach, then the teacher doesn’t need to take a sick day.  If the teacher is sick and can’t do any work, then that teacher needs to take a sick day.
• If a teacher is sick for more than two-three days, then the teacher and administrator need to try and get information out to students the best way possible.  This will probably mean having someone that works close to that teacher help get information out to students.  If this happens, please have the teacher that helps complete a timesheet for the work.
• Long-term substitutes.  We will continue to use long-term substitutes for teachers that are out long-term, on FMLA, etc.

Substitute Guidance for Balanced-Hybrid

• We have been working with the HDESD to get substitutes training on our systems.  The substitutes that take our trainings will be identified in the HDESD system (AESOP) as being trained and will have preference over substitutes that are not trained. Once we go to hybrid, obviously we’ll need substitutes in the building.

Reminders:

HDMS STAFF FAQ: Continue to refer to this document whenever you have general questions as there is a decent chance a colleague had the same question(s) already answered. If your question isn’t answered, add it to the top of the table to get an answer.

HDMS Highlights:

When being the “Home of the Diamondbacks” goes TOO far: