Allan's Announcements

By Allan 　https://blogs.4j.lane.edu/chinn/?p=4368

Hi Everyone,

It was a very busy first week back with lots of new staff, lots of cleaning out, lots of new students & families registering and more required meetings than usual. But through all that craziness, it was a whole lot of fun to see what a rockin’ team we have this year here at Howard!

I want to give a special shout out to Crystal and Mike and give them a big thank you for all their work helping staff set up their instructional spaces and for making our 66 year old building look nicer than it’s looked in a very long time. You two are awesome!

Twenty-eight items of note this week:

• Supervision First Week of School – All available staff should help supervise in the morning out front, in the breezeway and the 1st grade hallway areas. Students and buses generally start arriving at 7:25. Staff should also help out at dismissal in the bus area and by the Howard sign. We’ll especially need extra help at dismissal this year with full-day kindergarten and kinders dismissing the same time as everyone else.

• Updated 2015-2016 Master Schedule – Attached is an updated master schedule (XLS and PDF). Staff affected by changes already know about these, but changes include adjusting 4th grade PE/Music, Lunch/Recess and ELD times by five minutes and also changing the schedule so all grade levels are doing lunch first and then recess.

• Principal Visits to Classrooms – I’d like to again visit every classroom sometime during the first few weeks of school to greet students. I’ll read a favorite story to your class and chat with the kids a bit. Teachers, please let me know a good 10-15 minutes block of time I can come and visit. Thank you!

• PBIS Rules Round-Up – Our fabulous PBIS team has crafted a very thorough Rules Round-Up to review expectations across all locations with all students. See Mellissa’s email for details, but classroom teachers should remember to teach/reteach each setting at least twice, check it off on the checklist and turn it in to Rae’s box by Friday 9/16.

For the Cafeteria Round-Up, Cyria will be leading the rules review on Wednesday for every grade-level. Teachers are expected to bring their classes to the cafeteria at their designated time and stay to assist with management and rule reinforcement.

8:30-8:45 – 5th Grade
8:45-9:00 – 4th Grade
9:00-9:15 – 1st Grade
9:45-10:00 – 3rd Grade
10:00-10:15 – 2nd Grade
10:25-10:40 – Kinder

Also see the Recess Round-Up Schedule that was shared earlier for where classes and staff should be during morning recesses the first six days of school.

• Monthly PBIS Focus: Safety – The September PBIS monthly focus is Safety, so remember the PBIS/CFK Cheat Sheet, which matches our PBIS monthly themes with Caring for Kids class meeting lessons. This is a nice way to tie the PBIS and Caring for Kids together.

• District Mandatory Policy Review for all Staff – Linked here is the updated District Back-to-School Memo for 2015-2016, which covers a variety of district rules, policies and guidelines. All staff must review the memo and sign & return the check list acknowledgment form to Lori no later than Friday, September 25th. Hard copies of the check list were put in staff mailboxes last week. The memo is the same as last year with the exception of updates to the following sections:

2.) Summary of Spending Guidelines and Controls for 2015-16 – There are new spending guidelines and control in this massive document, but the part that applies most to building staff is in regards to Employee Reimbursements. See the link here to view just that section, but be aware that expenditures are supposed to be pre-approved by the building principal and that reimbursements are limited to $250 per reimbursement, per month.

5). School Board Policy JB: Harassment, Intimidation, Bullying, Cyberbullying, Hazing and Teen Dating Violence – This section was updated to include gender identity in the list of protected classes.

6.) School Board Policy JFG: Transgender and Gender Noncomforming Students – This is a new policy and also a more thorough corresponding administrative rule, that spells out rights of transgender and gender nonconforming students in regards to harassment, names/pronouns, registrations & SIS information, dress code, restroom accessibility, PE, athletics and activities, and locker room accessibility.

9.) School Board Policy AC: Nondiscrimination – This section was also updated to also include gender identity.

12.) Attendance Expectations – The district expects reliable and timely attendance by all employees. Please see the linked Attendance Expectations which are more explicit and detailed than those in the past.

• Howard Staff Handbook Review – Attached is the updated Howard Staff Handbook for 2015-2016. All staff must review the handbook and sign & return the acknowledgement form that was put in mailboxes last week to Lori by Friday, September 25th.

• Classroom Newsletters – I’d love to have copies of classroom newsletters (electronic version preferred) when teachers send/email them home to families. This helps me keep up to date on what’s happening or going to happen in classes when families ask, and it also lets me know details of any class activities that I might be able to get the local media to come out and cover. I love promoting our school!

• Howard PRIDE/PBIS Assembly – Not this week but next week will be the PRIDE/PBIS Kick-Off Assembly. The assembly will be in the gym at from 8:55-9:25. See the attached assembly map for logistical details and look for more info coming from the PBIS team.

• Howard/Kelly Track Use Schedule – Howard and Kelly will keep the same shared track use plan as last year. Howard can use the track five days a week at morning recesses and on Tuesdays and Thursdays for lunch recesses. The only exception to this is if a Kelly PE class happens to be using the track.

• Charis McGaughy, 4J Chief of Staff Touring Howard 9/17 – Charis McGaughy, who took Barb Bellamy’s place last year as Chief of Staff, asked to come tour Howard this year. She’s scheduled to come visit on Thursday, September 17th in the morning at 9:15, so don’t be surprised if we stop by your classroom next week.

• The Five B’s Reminder – For staff new to Howard, The Five Bs are the five acceptable health/medial reasons to send students to the office, which are Bleeding, Barfing, Badly Bruised, Broken or Burning Up with Fever. Please note that tummy aches, sore throats and being tired are not on this list. Also, it’s helpful if staff do send students to the office if you can send them on their own, rather than sending them with “helpers.”

• Staffing Updates – ESS is having to repost for our Life Skills and CLC EA vacancies (2.5 hour in Life Skills, 4 hour 1:1 CLC EA, a 6 hour 1:1 CLC EA and a 3.5 hours CLC EA). This means that we’ll be starting the year with subs for the first week and a half of school, but we’re going to try to get some of our regulars until ESS can finish hiring. We’re also still waiting to find out who will teach PE for us second semester.

• Howard Enrollment Update – Howard crossed the 400 student rubicon this past week and that places us among the largest elementary schools in Eugene. We’re now the largest elementary school in the North Region (we’re larger than Kelly MS too) and only six other 4J elementary schools were projected to be larger than we are now (Adams, Buena Vista, Chavez, Gilham, Holt and Willagillespie). I really do think Howard is gaining a strong reputation in the North community and more and more families are choosing to stay here (and we don’t even have a new building yet!). There are only a couple kindergarten packets still out, so these numbers are now pretty solid at this point. The grade level breakdown is KG (64), 1st grade (61), 2nd grade (81), 3rd grade (62), 4th grade (64) and 5th grade (67). Including Life Skills students, this puts us at 409 students enrolled, which is 27 students over our projection. And although downtown has a lot less money set aside this year for “class size adjustments” (1.2 million last year and only $200K this year) I do want staff to know that I’ve started making the case with downtown for additional staffing. I’m also pushing for an adjustment to our school budgets, since our per pupil allocation should have been 27 students worth larger, which is a few thousand dollars.

• Construction Updates – Attached are the minutes from the last Owner/Architect/General Contractor (OAC) Meeting and below are a couple related items of note:

• Tours of the Construction Site – The Communications Department is hoping to have a news crew join a classroom on a tour of the new building. If any of you would like to take your class on a tour just let me a date and time a couple days in advance and I will check with David Haggard, the site superintendent, if that’s a safe time to go out on the construction site. And when it’s you day to go out, tell kids that in addition of wearing a vest and hardhat that they are also supposed to wear closed-toe shoes.

• HVAC for Gym Wood Floor – They’re getting ready to install the gym wood floor and one interesting detail I didn’t know is that the floor cannot be installed until the HVAC system is running and maintaining a constant temperature. Todd Construction is planning to have the system operational by November 13th to keep the current floor installation schedule.

• TAG Identified Students – Teachers, if you have any TAG identified students in your class this year, you’ll have already received an email naming the kiddos. If you didn’t see an email, you’re off the hook.

• Morning Announcements Starts Monday, 9/14– I won’t do morning announcements the first three days of school, but we will be starting regular morning announcements the first full week of school on Monday, September 14th with a couple 5th graders who were trained up at the end of last school year.

• Student Photos on Internet and in the Media – We’ve had more students than usual this year with No School Web Site, No News Media, No Photographs and/or No Videos checked off on their enrollment paperwork. Teachers, please take note of which of your students have these restrictions before sharing any photos in newsletters or on your websites. You can find this information in Synergy by doing the following:

1. Go to REPORTS
2. Go down to STU401, but click on the blue icon to the right that says “Open Report Interface”
3. Click on CONDITIONS
4. Click ADD
5. Under Conditions select “NewsMedia” or “SchoolWebSite” in the dropdown
6. Under Not menu, select “Not” in the dropdown
7. Under Operator, select “Contains” in the dropdown
8. Under Valuen, type in Y
9. Then click print and you have a list of your students who do not have permission to be on the school website or be in the news media

• Leadership Plan Meeting, 9/16 – I’ll hold an optional meeting on Wednesday, September 16th at 2:30 in the library to develop leadership plan options. Schools with 350-449 students are be allocated 20 days to be divide among up to 7 teachers. We’ll vote on our leadership plan at our October staff meeting. If you can’t 9/16 the meeting, feel free to email me or let me know your thoughts.

• Classroom Printer Toner Cartridges – Our budget is pretty tight this year, especially with opening up three new classrooms and even more from being over enrolled by 27 students. I want to encourage staff to use the workroom and office copiers for your printing and for student printing, which is considerably cheaper than printing to classroom laser printers, only costing a fraction of a cent. versus a few cents per copy. Also, please try to have students save files electronically when possible instead of printing. That being said, I’m only going to be able to pay for one replacement print cartridge per classroom this year and after that teachers will need to use classroom funds if they want additional cartridges. Costing upwards of $250 a pop, this is unfortunately an expense we will be unable to continue beyond this school year.

• Workroom Locked this Year – Speaking of the workroom, with the TSS workspace now located in there and since we have had issues with student stealing from the workroom in the past, we’ll need to keep this door locked in order to keep things our tech secure.

• Birthday Lunches with the Principal – These were not initially on the building calendar (I had to wait for library slots to get filled first to see which day of the week was available), but Birthday Lunches with the Principal are now on the calendar one Friday each month, generally on the last Friday of each month. For our first celebration of August and September birthdays, we’ll do it on Friday, September 25th.

• Title IIA PD Application Ideas – As mentioned at our back-to-school staff meeting, we can apply for up to 17 sub days to support professional development. Ideas developed so far include peer observations around math instruction and technology integration, additional time for developing our Continuous Achievement Plan (CAP), and time for all intervention staff (CLC and ELD) to attend Data Team meetings. The application is due 9/15, the day of our first staff meeting, so if you have any additional ideas, please let me know before then.

• Free Mindset Kit – If you haven’t seen it yet, check out Stanford University’s FREE Mindset Kit. This free set of online lessons from Stanford University’s PERTS research center introduces students to the power of the growth mindset and describes what teachers and parents can do to help students embrace it. The kit has separate courses for teachers, parents, and teaching teams so I may bring this to a staff meeting at some point.

• District Admin Update – You may have read that Family School moved to the Crest Drive building over the summer from ATA (who’s grown so much they ran out of space for Family School). Twin Oaks principal, Kathy Owen, will now be the principal of both schools and will be splitting her time between the two buildings.

• Northwest Community Credit Union (NWCU) Grant – NWCU has a grant opportunity seeking requests for classroom supplies, technology, books, funding for projects, programs or field trips, to Northwest People Power volunteers to paint, landscape, move, or spruce up a space to make it a better learning environment for kids. Nominations will be accepted through October 15, 2015, while project fulfillment may extend into 2016. See their website for more information.

• Withholding Recess as a Punishment Declines – Rachel mentioned this EdWeek article at our Back-to-school staff meeting regarding the debate over withholding recess as a punishment. It’s an interesting read if you have time.

• Schedule of Events for the Week – See the Google Calendar for future events, but here are the events of note for the next two weeks:

September 7 (M)
Labor Day – No School

September 8 (T)
International Literacy Day
9:00-9:30, Allan meeting with Kindergarten Parent & Teacher
10:00, Q&A Session for New Staff – Optional (Library)
1:00-2:00, Meet your Teacher

September 9 (W)
First Day for Students
PBIS Focus: Safety
easyCBM Fall Benchmarking Begins (Reading & Math)
Howard Logo Embroidery Orders Due to Jenny

September 10 (H)
10:00, Allan Reading to Classroom
10:40, Allan Reading to Classroom

September 11 (F)
REGULAR DAY

September 14 (M)
2:30-5:00, Allan to Elementary Principals’ Meeting (Ed Center)

September 15 (T)
10:00, Allan Reading to Class
2:30-3:30, Staff Meeting (Library)
6:00-7:00, PTO Meeting (Library)

September 16 (W)
8:55-9:25, PRIDE/PBIS Assembly (Gym)
9:25-11:00, Allan to OAC Meeting (Construction Trailer)
2:30-3:30, Optional Leadership Plan Development Meeting (Library)

September 17 (H)
9:15, Charis McGaughy, 4J Chief of Staff, Touring Howard
2:30-3:30, PBIS Meeting (Room 21)

September 18 (F)
7:30-9:00, Allan to 4JMAPS Meeting

Have a great first week, everyone, and from our Back-to-School Staff Meeting, enjoy what I believe is our school’s new theme song (at least for a number of our staff of a certain age). :)

Allan