Madison Middle School

By barsotti_p 　https://blogs.4j.lane.edu/madisonstaff/2022/01/07/january-7th-2022/

Hi Madison Staff,

I hope you all had a good first week back with the students!

Here are this week’s updates:

MADISON INFORMATION         

• Returning to School: This is my friendly PSA about returning to work healthy. Weekly COVID cases rose over 25% this week and are expected to continue to climb as this new variant appears to be more contagious than previous ones. Vaccination status doesn’t seem to offer protection from becoming infected, but instead reduces the likelihood of becoming seriously ill. If you don’t feel well, please stay home until you are feeling better. The CDC has put out new guidelines around isolating and quarantining, but we haven’t adopted those as a district yet, so we are continuing with the old protocols for now.

• Focus Slide: Star Wars themed slides 

DISTRICT INFORMATION                               

• PD/PLC Time Returning: January brings with it the return of some of our PD and PLC time. The time has been reduced to 1 hour per week and will be on Fridays from 1:30-2:25 to ensure teachers get their golden hour of planning as well. I’ll share more about our plan during our January 3rd meeting. There are only two Fridays in January so we’ll get a nice slow start.
     
• EasyCBM Winter Benchmarking: The easyCBM testing window for winter will be from January 4 – February 18. TLC will talk about our next steps for EasyCBM.
      
• COVID Updates:
     
  • Test to Stay: We are implementing a test to stay protocol ONLY for students who are unvaccinated and a close contact due to a COVID exposure at school. Students will still be required to quarantine if they are an unvaccinated close contact due to an exposure outside of school. 
         
  • COVID Testing for Symptomatic Individuals: We are able to offer Binax Now rapid tests for students who appear to be symptomatic while at school. We cannot offer this as “come in and see if you have COVID”, but instead as an additional layer when kids are sent to the office displaying COVID symptoms such as a fever. Robin, Kim R, and myself are the coordinators for this testing. Kim, Robin, or I will communicate with families around testing should a student be symptomatic.
      
• January No School Dates: January has quite a few no school dates…
  • Monday, January 17 – Martin Luther King, Jr Holiday
  • Friday, January 28 – Progress Reports
        
• Winter Weather: We may have a few more late starts and possibly some snow days in our future. The district announces these events by 6:30am. They communicate via text to families as well as posting on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Additionally, they post to the district website. I will also implement a phone tree to communicate late starts and snow days. I will text licensed staff members who will then communicate with the EAs with whom they work. If there’s no news, assume school is happening as planned.
  • 2 Hour Delay: This means school is postponed by 2 hours and our doors open at 9:45 instead of 7:45. Full time licensed staff would report by 9:30. Classified staff who start before 9:30, would also report by 9:30. If your start time is after 9:30, you would report at your regular start time. Please reach out if you have questions.
  • Snow Day: School is canceled and the vast majority of staff are not expected to report to work on these days.
  • Use of Leave: If you’re unable to report to work on a 2 hour delay day, you will need to use leave time. Please connect with me or Lori if you need to use leave on a 2 hour delay day.

PROFESSIONAL LEARNING AND OTHER INFORMATION       

• Creative Ways to Teach Breathing to Young Learners: This article from Edutopia provides ways to “Make Breathing Visible” for kids. From belly stones to art about breath, these strategies can help students learn to use breathing as a calming and centering technique.
     
• EEA Seminar Brochure: Linked here is the EEA 2022 Professional Development Seminar Series. Along with helpful PD, licensed staff can also earn credits to bump columns on the pay scale.

Next Week at a Glance:

May your students be kind and your patience be plentiful.

Peter and Gina