Staff Bulletin
Week of April 6 - April 10, 2020
A Message from Lisa
We have had another great week of at-home learning! I continue to receive calls, texts, and emails from parents about the awesome work our teachers are doing! Keep it up!
This district will continue operating under essential operations through the month of April (see below for further explanation).
Make plans to meet us for a Zoom Faculty Meeting on Wednesday, April 8 at 2:00 PM. You will be invited through the Powell Calendar and a link to the meeting will be included. This makes it easier to find without digging through your email.
ARDs and 504s will attempt to be scheduled on Tuesdays. If you intend to pick a certain day of the week for class Zoom meetings, pick a day other than Tuesday.
Enjoy the week!
Lisa
CALENDAR
Sunday (4/5)
Powell Publisher goes out to parents for week of 4/6-4/9 with Instructional Lessons
3:00 Paper copies in filing cabinet for the week
Monday
10:00-11:00 Specials Team at Powell as needed
Tuesday
8:00 Principals Meeting
9:30-10:30 4th Team at Powell as needed
ARDs and 504s may be scheduled, please do not plan to Zoom with your class
Wednesday
1:00 Zoom Meeting- Team Leaders
2:00 Zoom Meeting- All Powell Faculty
Hump Day Challenge
Thursday
8:00 Principals Meeting
9:00-10:00 Kinder Team at Powell as needed
10:00-11:00 3rd Team at Powell as needed
11:00-12:00 2nd Team at Powell as needed
12:00 Grade level Instructional plans for Week of 4/13-4/17 emailed to Becky and Erin (Google Slide or Google Doc)
Friday
10:00-11:00 Special Ed Team at Powell as needed
11:00-12:00 1st Team at Powell as needed
Spirit Day - Favorite Team Day
Freaky Science Friday on Facebook with Bush Elementary
Saturday (4/11)
Weekend Warriors with our Specials Team on Facebook
Powell Publisher goes out to parents for week of 4/13-4/17 with Instructional Lessons
Who to Call
LISA
ALL COMMUNICATIONS TO STAFF AND PARENTS
SCHEDULING MEETINGS
INTRA AND INTER DISTRICT TRANSFERS
SPECIAL ED AND PRE-K TEACHERS
PLANNING FOR NEXT YEAR
SARAH
STUDENT PAPER COPIES
BUILDING OPERATIONS, SCHOOL MAIL
CALENDAR
APPRAISALS AND SUMMATIVE CONFERENCES
ESL/GT
K-2 TEACHERS
ERIN
INSTRUCTIONAL INFORMATION FOR PUBLISHER
504/DYSLEXIA
3-4 TEACHERS
TECH FOR STUDENTS
BECKY
TECH SUPPORT FOR TEACHERS
INSTRUCTIONAL INFORMATION FOR PUBLISHER
ELIZABETH
TECH SUPPORT
WEBSITE
SHAWN
PLACEMENT FOR 2020-2021
SUPPORT FOR TEACHERS, STUDENTS, AND FAMILIES
LUPITA
ABSENCES
PAYROLL
ORDERING
MICHELLE
REGISTRATION
MAINTAINING STUDENT INFORMATION
TEAM LEADERS
COMMUNICATION WITH TEAMS
COORDINATION OF INSTRUCTIONAL PLANS WITH TEAM
ESSENTIAL OPERATIONS
Our current priorities continue to revolve around the continuity of learning, providing nutrition and other supports to our students, and communicating with our entire learning community while taking precautions to keep our staff and students safe so that we are reducing and delaying the spread of COVID-19.
Essential operations means that non-exempt employees will work from home and will be limited to standard hours. Hourly (non-exempt) employees should only be working remotely and from home unless approved by Lisa.
The District will run the air conditioning from 8AM to noon. Similar to the week of March 16-23 (when the District was closed), those hourly employees that are required/necessary to work during the week of April 6-9 will be paid in addition to the standard hours. This requires Director/Principal authorization.
Essential Operations means that no one, including exempt staff, should physically be at a campus or in an office when the work can be done remotely. This includes counselors and administrators. Teachers and staff may come on site to retrieve items necessary to work from home or to prepare and send out a packet, but are not allowed to stay and work in that setting. Again, it is okay to come and get something, to drop off something, etc., but not to stay.
Our facilities remain closed to the public. When it is necessary to have staff on site, all employees must maintain social distancing, wiping equipment with disinfectant before each use, particularly the copy machine.
Direct Non-Exempt Staff (hourly employees) to not respond to or generate any emails except during the hours of 8-3.
further instructions for at-home learning
Precautions at school and the copy room
Gloves and Clorox wipes are available for you on the front desk. Please use these while working in the front office. Remember to wash your hands or use hand sanitizer when entering and exiting the building. Wipe down the copier after each use.
Custodial will be checking facilities, e-misting the administration area, and will also leave one spray bottle of Quat 256 disinfectant in each main copy room starting Wednesday, April 1st. Please leave the spray bottles in the copy room and they will be refilled as needed on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.
Packet Pick-Up
A few reminders from TEA:
1. No school personnel who have symptoms consistent with COVID-19 should prepare packets. Each day that a staff member will be involved in packet preparation, they should, at a minimum, check their temperature before putting packets together. Staff members who are symptomatic should self-quarantine as recommended by the CDC.
2. No school personnel should be involved in packet preparation if they know they have had close, direct contact with an individual who has COVID-19 or is otherwise symptomatic. For example, if someone in a school staff member’s home is showing signs of the virus, even if they are not yet symptomatic, that school staff member should not be involved in putting packets together.
3. Any locations in the school used for packet preparation should be thoroughly cleaned, following appropriate cleaning protocols, before packet preparation begins.
4. Wait 24 hours before distributing packets to families if only paper-based materials are involved. Wait 72 hours if plastic materials are used.
It is also recommended that we wait 24 hours after a drop-off cycle before beginning to open the packets, and if you have provided envelopes for parents/students to return their homework packets in, use envelopes that do not require them to be moistened to be sealed.
5. In order to follow the recommendations stated here, packets will need to be placed in the file cabinet by 3:00 on Sunday for pick-up at 3:00 Monday. Please make sure to take precautions while accessing the file cabinet as well.
PRIVACY AND SENSITIVE DOCUMENTS
As we work more and more from home, it is important to not store sensitive items on your home computer. One of the limitations of E-Binders is you have to download something to work on. Should you need to download work, be sure to delete the item once it is put back in the U-drive.
Pearson and Copyright Issues
Pearson assignments cannot by viewable outside of CISD. If you have Pearson PDF links as part of your instruction, you must set the viewing rights to "Anyone at Conroeisd.net with the link". This will require students to be signed in to SSO. You are allowed to print Pearson pages and put them in paper packets for students. You can also send the pages as an attachment in an email.
Here is text you could put on your slide to let students and parents know how to access:
Copyrighted materials (i.e. textbook pages) can not be put in a public forum (i.e. open website).
IN ORDER TO ACCESS THE PEARSON PAGES ON/OFF THIS SITE THE TEACHER OR STUDENT MUST BE LOGGED INTO THEIR SSO.
Below is a document from the Math Department with further instructions for using Pearson.
GRADING CONSIDERATIONS- SUBJECT TO CHANGE
Third Nine Weeks
- Report cards have gone home via PAC
- Students who do not have a PAC account will have report cards mailed to their home.
- PK and Kindergarten students will have report cards mailed to their home.
- Special education documentation can be emailed home with a password protected document.
Fourth Nine Weeks
- Board policy & procedures for progress reports have flexibility.
- Elementary and intermediate students could elect to have a parent conference to discuss any challenges a student has been facing throughout the year. Notes can be logged into ViewIt.
- Grades for elementary and intermediate would be based on a skill, not a particular assignment. With that said, campuses do have to hold a sampling of work from students for auditing. It can be work from one student and not all. Samples need to be from Language Arts, Math, Social Studies and Science. This can be a physical sample or pulled from Canvas, DreamBox, etc. Please let Becky Rahlfs know if you have an electronic version of sampling to ensure that the correct reports have been pulled.
- Elementary and intermediate would have one grade per week for math and reading. Social studies and science grades could also be assigned based on participation (example: parent could send in a photo of making oobleck, flipgrid of current events and how our police, etc. are helping us). Once we return, one major grade would be given to cover the 4th grading period in math and reading.
- No progress reports until April 24th. Grades will be pulled at the end of the day on the 24th, the pull will occur on April 27th and parents will be able to view on April 29th.
Sampling of Student Work
In order to claim ADA for missed days, we will need to maintain evidence of student learning in the event that we are audited. Those items are automatically stored in Canvas. For those grades and subjects not in Canvas, we will need a sample of student work kept on file for each grade level and each subject at each school.
Entering Parent Contacts in View It
- Log in to View-It
- Search for the student you want to document parent contact with
- Communication
- Parent Contacts
- Fill in the Parent Contact form at the bottom of the page
- Click "Create Parent Contact Form" to submit
VIDEOCONFERENCING
1. Videoconferences for support of online learning should be considered a classroom environment. All parties should be in school appropriate attire and adhere to communication etiquette appropriate to a classroom. The setting should be an open living area (such as kitchen or living room) and not closed private areas of the home.
2. Conferences should be done in groups of students. Groups of less than 5 should seek alternate means of communication or be approved by the principal. On-to-one conferencing or individual students accessing "virtual office hours" should be done only with the parent/guardian present.
3. If inappropriate behavior arises, the teacher should Close the Meeting for All and address the issue with parents.
4. Students should be invited through a closed system, such as Canvas, Classroom Dojo, school email. Only invited students should be allowed to attend the videoconference.
5. *If the conference is recorded, it cannot be released outside the Canvas platform for any reason and must be locked so that it cannot be duplicated. Recorded videos should not be sent through email.
T-TESS
T-TESS Calendar
4/17- Student Growth Tracker must be uploaded, Complete or continue professional goals
4/24- Summatives sent to Teachers who were observed this year
5/1- Teachers who were observed this year must sign summatives
SLO Student Growth Tracker
Please upload your Student Growth Tracker by Friday, April 17. Your Student Growth Tracker should have 2 checkpoints filled in. The third can be left blank. Below is a step-by-step help document if you need it.
T-TESS Professional Goal and SLO
Your Professional goal and SLO should be completed or continued by April 17. Below is a step-by-step document if you need help completing or continuing your goals.
T-TESS Summative Conferences (only for people who were observed this year)
Lisa, Sarah, and Erin will type up summative conferences and have them available for you to view on Strive on Friday, April 24. Once you have looked over the summative conference, your appraiser will contact you for a virtual conference to talk through the summative. The summative conference form needs to be signed by May 1.
Eduphoria - Strive looks a little different these days. Please view the two help documents below and contact Sarah or Erin if you need further assistance.
CHAMPS for the Virtual Classroom
Notes from ELA Department
Posting ELA Videos
The videos that ELA is posting to the teacher website are examples for you to create your own. We were asked to create some videos as examples only for the teachers in the district to see how lessons can be taught online. Our videos are not intended to show to your students. Your teachers know their students better than we do and how to change the teaching to best meet the needs of your individual classes. We are merely coaching your teachers by providing examples and overviews.
Please do not send these out to students and parents. We will be happy to show/help teachers create their own. They are quite fun and your students will love to see their own teacher doing the lessons than some stranger teaching them. A suggestion would be that each person on the team or content area be responsible for recording one lesson and sharing it with the team to send out to students. If the team does that, then the teachers will not have as many to do.
Sharing Links from the ELA Website
If you want to use resources from the ELA website, download the documents from the links to your own google page and then link the resource from there. Also, teachers must sign in with their CISD google account. Otherwise you will not have access to the documents.
Staff Development Exchange Day - August 4, 2020
Safe Schools is a library of online school-focused safety courses that can be accessed anytime and anywhere through the CISD website. The Safe Schools courses selected for our teachers, nurses, speech therapists, and librarians cover various topics, including child abuse identification and intervention, sexual harassment, and many others.
All staff who choose to participate in “exchange day” will use the Safe Schools system to complete their online training. Each staff member will need to follow the steps below:
1. Beginning April 6, 2020, you will be able to login to the Safe Schools website to access your training. All teachers, librarians, speech therapists, and nurses will use their assigned Employee Identification Number (EIN) to login to the Safe Schools website at
http://conroe.tx.safeschools.com/login/ or by going to the CISD Single Sign-On Portal selecting “Safe Schools” in the CISD Apps.
a. To login, an employee must know his or her EIN; This number will be the employee’s
username in Safe Schools. No password is required.
b. If you have trouble logging in, please contact Sarah or Erin.
2. The EINs for new employees will be uploaded every Monday. If you are a new teacher, librarian, speech therapist, or nurse and have not been assigned an EIN, please contact Claire Amos at camos@conroeisd.net or 936-709-7782.
3. Once you have logged into Safe Schools, you will see the list of courses that have been assigned to you. To start a training, click on the course title and follow the prompts. You can start and stop a course at any time, but you must view each page of the training, complete each required scenario, and complete the required assessment with 70% accuracy in order to receive credit for the training. The training can be completed on any computer that has access to the Internet.
4. The employee handbook will be added upon its approval. Communication will be sent out to log in to Safe Schools to access and acknowledge you have read and received the employee handbook.
5. Save all certificates of Safe Schools training completed. Be mindful of any position change during, or after, the time of completing required courses. A change in position may change your required courses.
Forgot your EIN? You may look it up using the employee directory located at https://directory.conroeisd.net/default.aspx and clicking on “Get My Info.”
(You must either be on the CISD network or use the Single Sign-On Portal to access the directory page.)
ESL Students
All of our ESL students have been given free access to Imagine Learning! This is a great online resource for our students to use from home to help with language and literacy development. All teachers who have ESL students have been granted access.Teachers are also able to participate in Imagine Learning webinars should they need further assistance. Please reach out to Sarah Radford if you have any questions.
GT Maintenance Hours
It is required that each school year you maintain your GT certification with 6 maintenance hours. Please login to Eduphoria for online GT workshop opportunities.
TAGT Flier with the new registration code is attached. This is an online option to earn up to 6 hours of GT credit.
🎂 Happy Happy Birthday to You!
April 13 Mary Aitken
April 15 Gia Stokes
April 25 Janet Helton
April 26 Carol Gardner
April 30 Amanda Pearce
April 30 Amy Spurlin
CISD Non-Discrimination statement
The Conroe Independent School District (District) as an equal opportunity educational provider and employer does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national origin, sex, religion, age, or disability in educational programs or activities that it operates or in employment matters. The District is required by Title VI and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as amended, Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, the Age Discrimination Act of 1975, as amended, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, the Americans with Disabilities Act, as well as Board policy not to discriminate in such a manner.
For information about Title IX rights or Section 504/ADA rights, contact the Title IX Coordinator or the Section 504/ADA coordinator at 3205 W. Davis, Conroe, TX 77304; (936) 709-7752.