Lincoln Lion's Local Buzz
March 13, 2020
Principal's Post
- KCS district leadership is working around the clock to ensure that our district is responding appropriately to the current health situation. As you have noticed, the three school systems in Sullivan County (Bristol, Kingsport, and Sullivan County) are united in their communication with our community. As I have information to share, I will definitely relay that information to you. My goal is to keep Jackson informed while also ensuring that my communication is consistent with others across KCS. If you have specific questions, please reach out to me.
- All KCS head custodians met Thursday morning to review current information and get updates on our health situation. They are continuing to disinfect surfaces on a daily basis and will keep prioritizing that for the foreseeable future. The focus and time spent disinfecting may at times result in not having quite as much time as normal for the other usual custodial tasks. They are working really hard to get it all accomplished, but are placing their primary focus on disinfecting to keep illness at bay.
- Please be aware of new procedures in the nurses office to separate sick and healthy students. We do our best to keep students apart, but if it is not possible to have separation we will temporarily close the nurses office, move medication administration to another location like the office, and minimize trips to the office for non emergency visits. Have students wash hands frequently or use hand sanitizer when you can't get to soap and water.
RTI Attendance Sheets Matter
First of all - SHOUT OUT TO THOSE WHO HAVE MAINTAINED ACCURATE RTI Attendance Sheet documentation for each student. That is a time-consuming task and none of us has enough time- EVER.
It is imperative that we accurately fill out each student's RTI attendance form to document targeted intervention and probe data in one place. Once a student leaves our district, we are no longer able to access their information on EasyCBM. Recently, a student was in the referral process for special education with us and moved to a near-by district. In this case, the new district required having more data points than does KCS to refer for Special Education eligibility consideration- which we HAD gathered but could not prove due to our inability to pull up EasyCBM. All documentation of hard work and student support on our end would have been lost had it not been for the accurate documentation on that student's attendance sheet.
This is one of the reasons we can't have attendance sheets without last names, tier, and intervention being used documented. Probe names are being listed but we need to record the raw score AND the percentile in which that score falls in. We also need to make sure we are documenting changes (such as program and interventionist).
Please check over attendance sheets for your groups and those groups supported by IAs at your grade level. I will be checking for these updates during my next Direct Observation Fidelity Checks to confirm that our documentation is in order. I will flag attendance sheets with incomplete documentation with post-it notes and notify homeroom teachers when/if one of their students needs additional information recorded.
I am also re-sharing this photo example from the RTI folder of the Shared Drive
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PQpOD00Cq7qz4m9MePxa8CC0U4P2rSs40TVQwvM9emc/edit
Again, thank you for your dedication to accurate RTI documentation.
TEACHER CLAIMING- Grades 3-5 and SPED
The spring teacher student claiming window will be Monday, March 16 – Friday, May 8, in EdTools. Lincoln teachers will begin claiming process Tuesday, March 17, during PLCs.Bring your charged laptop with you to grade level meeting location. Sheppard will bring attendance data for each homeroom.
Assessment data is not required to complete the process. Schools will not be submitting until the conclusion of their school-level testing windows. That way, teachers will have time to make any needed changes if there are students whose claiming status changes between now and the close of the window.
As a reminder, claiming is calculated for time until the end of the school year or block. Teachers will need to determine the instructional time and availability for their students. The teacher student claiming process plays a crucial role in ensuring that there is accurate data for calculating teacher value-added reports and evaluation composites. To support teachers and schools in the claiming process, please feel free to access the teacher student claiming resources found here.
State Claiming Memo: https://www.tn.gov/content/dam/tn/education/special-education/memo/sped_memo_guidelines_for_tchrs_claim_students_tchr_effect_calculations.pdf
Any questions may be directed to your BTC or Claiming.Questions@tn.gov.
PLC This Week
I am finalizing with Autum if we will meet with grades K-2 for RTI work this week. If we do meet, we will meet on Tuesday, not Thursday. I will keep everyone posted regarding our meeting once I hear from Autumn.
Upcoming Dates
- SPDG PD--Sheppard, Farmer, and Brooks out of the building.
- Musick out of the building.
Tuesday, March 17th
- PLC/Claiming/RTI meetings--Conference Room--Confirmed Grades 3-5--possibly K-2
- Leadership 3:40-5:00--Conference Room. Andrea F. Guest Speaker.
- Spark 3:30-5:00--Gym
- Musick out of the building.
- PTO Meeting-6:00-7:00--Library/Conference Room
Wednesday, March 18th
- Zahner out of the building AM
- Musick out of the building
Thursday, March 19th
- Sheppard out all day for PD
- Musick out of the building
Friday, March 20th
- Last day before break! Let's make the most of it!
Tennessee Educator Survey - currently 35% response from Lincoln (We are UP from last week)
The Tennessee Educator Survey link should have been sent to your inbox last week. Please take time to complete this survey. Last year we had 79% participation. This survey is important because it provides us useful information about our next steps and gives people who are not part of our school family an idea of what our school is like from the people who know it best--the teachers! We have done great things at our school and the Tennessee Educator Survey is one opportunity to make others aware of how we feel about our school. Sometimes, parents that are visiting our school for tours will reference these survey results that they have accessed on the state web site.