It has been an adventurous first two weeks of school. I can’t thank our staff and families enough for their support, positivity and patience. This is hard work! I know we can do great things as long as we communicate and support each other as a community of learners.

There is a lot of important information below. Please take your time and read through it carefully.

On October 9th there is no school for students. For 6th-12th grade students, Wednesday, October 7th will be an A-Day and Thursday, October 8th will be a B-Day.

We want to sincerely apologize for frustration caused by our attendance line not working. It has now been activated by our Information Technology department.

Attendance requirements are set by the Oregon Department of Education. As an online school, we understand schedule flexibility is a key part of your success. Students are not required to join live video sessions for attendance. Students are required to engage with their course(s) or instructor each day. Potential ways to engage are listed below under each grade level area. Teachers are allowed to update attendance within 24 hours of an absence. Should you get a call home from the system, if your student has interacted with the teacher or course within 24 hours, it will be updated.

If you need to report an absence, please call our main office number: (503) 356 - 3720. You can then press “1” for attendance and leave a message or press “0” to reach the main office.

Elementary (Kinder - 5th) Attendance

To be marked present, students must do at least one of the following every day (including Wednesdays):

• Take part in a live video session with the instructor

• Log in to Canvas and fill in the attendance form

• Send your teacher a message in the Canvas Inbox

• Submit an assignment or make progress in the curriculum
  
  

Please check with your teacher for specific instructions for your class.

Secondary (6th - 12th Grade) Attendance

To be marked present, students must do at least one of the interactions listed below for every class that has office hours that day (A or B day). On Wednesdays, students only need to interact with their Advisory Canvas course.

• Take part in a live video session with the instructor

• Log in to Canvas and fill in the attendance form

• Send your teacher a message in the Canvas Inbox

• Submit an assignment or make progress in the curriculum (Apex, FLVS)

Please check with your teacher for specific instructions for your class.

One of the keys to success for online learning is following a schedule and structure each day at home that works best for your family. Students should check with their teachers and look in Canvas to find out when live sessions will take place. These are not mandatory as long as students are communicating, interacting with Canvas and their curriculum and making steady progress.

• Art, Business, Technology and Psychology are considered elective courses for the office hour schedule.

• All other courses, even if taken as elective credit, fall in their content area block for office hours.

We are pleased to welcome our new Art and Spanish Specials for grades 1-5! Ms. Lashley (Art) and Jani Stier (Spanish) are setting up their schedules with grade-level teams. These courses will show up on student dashboards soon. Specials are an important way for students to engage with their class community while creating, listening, speaking and learning.

• Jocelyn’s Art Welcome Letter

• Maestra Jani’s Spanish Welcome Letter

Each user in Canvas, including parents and guardians with active ParentVUE accounts, controls their own notifications. We know some of you are being overwhelmed by emails or notifications. You can adjust your notification settings to get what you want, when you want it in Canvas. The parent video on the district web page has information on how to do this. Scan forward to minute 24:34 to hear an intro and then at minute 28:18, the nuts and bolts of notifications are explained.

We want to thank our district Information Technology team members who have been working so hard the last couple of weeks to help everyone as quickly as they can. We know it hasn’t always been easy to contact them. If you have technical issues or questions, use the contact information below.

• Digital Permissions need to be signed to access tools and systems required for FLEX Online School. The district Digital Resources page has the forms you need to fill in and return.

• For device or login problems, contact the Student Help Desk.

• For questions or problems with Apex or Florida Virtual, email flex-support@beaverton.k12.or.us

• For questions about Canvas, please contact your teacher. If they can’t help, they will contact someone on our team who can.

After further investigation, we have determined the “zoom bombing” incident that included hateful language was from an outside source or automated “bot”. The name used is not one found in the Beaverton School District. There were also no signs of chat interaction with students and random sets of letters were present. While we know it is impossible to stop all hacking attempts, we are confident the security and process protocols we implemented will be effective.

Thanks for reading!

Paul Ottum

Principal FLEX Online