FOR the RECORD
January 2019
The Weather if Frightful, it is Cold Outside
Too cold for recess? What is the rule?
Listed below are the cold weather guidelines from Administrative Practices and Procedures 2018-19. Appropriate clothing and shoes and short exposure time to the cold are essential. Health Services has resources for support. If you have students that need clothing or shoes, please contact your school nurse. Those students who walk to school are a special concern especially when outdoor temperatures fall. Please contact the Health Services office if you need CU bus passes and remember that the Attendance Advisors are a great resource as well.
Weather-related postponements and cancellations of athletic practices and/or events will continue to be communicated through the District Athletic office to site Athletic Directors.
Administrative Practices and Procedures
Weather-Related Information (page 13)
Cold: When temperatures are 32 degrees F or below and/or wind chill factor is 15 degrees F or below, there is an increased chance for hypothermia and frostbite. Students should be encouraged to wear layered clothing and limit exposure to outdoor temperatures, including recess and/or physical education.
No outdoor recess is allowed when temperature and/or wind chill is equal to or below 29 degrees. If outdoor temperature and/or wind chill is 30-32 degrees F, students may be outdoors for no longer than 10 minutes wearing appropriately layered clothing, i.e. coats, hats, scarves, and gloves. For additional information, contact Health Services (523-1630).
Residency and SPS District
Board of Education Policy JECA-2 addresses Admission of Students. It is specific to domicile of students. Simply put, it means the child lives in and has their head in a bed at the location. This location is the identifier of that child's school of residence.
If you have a situation where there might be a difference between the child's physical address and the actual physical address there are multiple methods to gather this information.
1. Call the parent and ask. A straight-forward conversation with the parent about the child's safety in emergency situations makes it critical we have an authentic verifiable address on file. There are a very few exceptions to this expectation.
2. Send your Attendance Adviser out to the residence listed. More than once this method has helped clarify residency situations.
3. Send a Five-Day Residency letter. The Manager of Administrative Services is responsible for sending these. It gets results quickly as well.
4. Sometimes, the Manager of Administrative Services calls the parent. Imagine getting a voice message saying that they need to call the central office number to explain their residency. People do call back in a timely manner, in most cases.
For more information on JECA-2 click on the link below:
Volunteers
Immediate Transfers
Third quarter revocations for elementary and middle school students should be sent prior to the last day of the quarter. There is nothing more disappointing that to receive a letter saying your child has to attend their home school during the Spring Break vacation days because their transfer has been revoked. Please make a call to the parent well in advance or if the violation occurs during the first week in March, a phone call about the revocation is a must in addition to the letter sent.
High school transfer revocation is tricky during second or third quarter. Since we are dealing with high schools on different block schedules, and credits negatively impacted if a student's home high school is on a different system, we try to revoke at semester and at the end of the year.
Critical Alerts and eSchool
Something to think about
1. When you put a critical alert in the student screen about an exparte-put the type of exparte it is. Adult or Child, it will make a difference. Put the begin date and the end date. 99% of these have an end date. So the critical alert will be something like this.
Mr. John Doe Citizen has an adult exparte on file (Jan 1, 2019-Feb. 1-2019)
2. Of course, you will not have the time nor is it an expectation that you will go through all your student screen's looking for expired legal matters. But if you put a begin and end date on a screen, on the occasion when you pull that student up, you will know it is time to replace / correct the information. DO not delete any comments/critical alerts on the notes screen. Just correct the information.Some exparte's listed in student screens on a critical alert have been expired more than a year or two. When you notice this, check in with guardian with whom the child is residing.
3. It might be that the parent that had the exparte against them, now has supervised visits with their child or it might be that this person now has custody, or divorced-separated, feuding guardians now are living together again happily.
Critical alerts can be seen by anyone that has access to the student screen, be sensitive to how much information is shared on critical alert notes.
See picture below