This is an extremely charged time with a lot of fear, uncertainty and doubt. I want our learning community to know that we are working with our teachers and staff to hear ideas, support, and concerns so that we can make reasonable accommodations. Our district nurses have been meeting with all of our elementary staff, spending extensive time answering health and safety questions. Next week I, too, will be hosting meetings to hear directly from our teachers and staff for the sake of our district now and moving forward. My intention is for us to build understanding and ease concerns as we prepare to transition to in-person learning.

Please consider listening to the School Board meeting discussion about reopening, shared in this newsletter. It provides insights into the thinking and planning going into our reopening efforts. The most important message is that we are committed to being flexible. We are all going to need to support each other as we navigate these complex circumstances by being both nimble and resilient.

Grab & Go Meals will not be distributed on Monday, Jan. 18, as school is out in honor of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Holiday. Instead, meals will be distributed on Tuesday, Jan. 19 and the regularly scheduled Thursday, Jan. 21.

LO School Board elections are coming up. Filing for board positions begins on Feb. 8.

Directors Kirsten Aird and Liz Hartman are hosting virtual meetings for community members interested in serving on the board.

• Tuesday, Jan. 26, 12-1 p.m.
• Wednesday, Jan. 27, 8-9 a.m.
• Thursday, Feb. 4 5:30-6:30 p.m.

Please email either liz.hartman@loswego.k12.or.us or kirsten.aird@loswego.k12.or.us to RSVP and receive the meeting Zoom link.

LO School Board members serve four-year terms. Following are the board positions up for election this year:

• Position 2: Currently held by Neelam Gupta
• Position 3: Currently held by Sara Pocklington
• Position 4: Currently held by Liz Hartman

For more information about the LO School Board, please visit the district website School Board page or the Oregon School Boards Association at www.osba.org

A video of the School Board meeting discussion on Tuesday, Jan. 12 can be found on the School Board page, under Meeting Archives. Please click here.

We are delighted to announce Ryann Furrer has been appointed Interim Assistant Principal for Lakeridge Middle School. Ryann is filling the position made vacant by Jennie Knapp's move to Lake Grove Elementary. Ryann will start her new position February 1.

Ryann brings to the assistant principal position more than 20 years of experience as an educator and coach for teachers and students. Most recently Ryann has served as the district teacher coach for LOSD, in which she has coordinated with school administrators to support new and striving teachers to improve student learning outcomes. Prior to her mentor role, Ryann served as the Response to Intervention (RTI) coordinator at Hallinan Elementary and Westridge Elementary and a classroom teacher at Lake Grove Elementary. Ryann also has coached high school and club soccer teams for many years.

Ryann holds an administrator license and a Master of Arts in teaching, early childhood/elementary from George Fox University, Portland, Ore. and a Bachelor of Science, administration of justice, from Portland State University, Portland, Ore.

Please join us in welcoming Ryann to her new position and to the Lakeridge Middle School Community.

Dawn Young, Forest Hills, has been adding to her teaching practices a balance of academics but also social and connecting time to focus on the whole child upon learning that some of her students were missing friends and needing more social time. Shifting her practices to, as she said, let kids be kids.

Rose Freeman, Hallinan, relayed she has been paying attention to social-emotional learning needs of children, and being flexible with students and their needs including how and when they show what they are learning. She sometimes invites the counselor to join conversations with kids to check in on them. She also sent a picture of her whole class surprising her by holding homemade thank you signs they had made to send her off on a high note to winter break

Barb McQuillen, Oak Creek, shared fun examples of the students collaborating with her to help her teach remotely and ways she has engaged students to own their learning and demonstrate learning in creative ways. She conveyed she is excited and inspired by the ingenuity and positivity of students!

Kelly Hutchison, River Grove, described her favorite moment this year as a breakthrough with a student whose parents were having a difficult time getting him to even log onto the Zoom class each day. She thought about an interactive activity they could do that might interest and engage him and his interests, emailed his parents to ask them to tell him about it and he logged on that day and each day after.

Registration for the 2021-22 school year will begin soon.

• January 20, 2021 for registering new students enrolling into grades 1–12 who have never enrolled in Lake Oswego before and returning students enrolling into grades 1–12 who are not currently enrolled but will re-enroll for next year.
• February 24, 2021 for registering new students enrolling into kindergarten for the 2021-22 school year.
• Students who are currently attending LOSD during the 2020-21 school year do not need to register for the 2021-22 school year.
  

LOSD is pleased to offer online registration through its parent portal, ParentVUE (contact your resident school for help with logging in). See the Registration & Verification page of the LOSD website for guidance.

This year, LOSD is shifting to a standards-based report card for students in elementary schools. This new report card measures a child’s progress toward proficiency or mastery of the priority standards in Reading, Writing, Language, Speaking, and Math.

This approach provides the means for communicating a child’s learning in more specific terms. Standards-based reporting articulates clear end-of-year grade-level standards for each subject. Using the scale below, teachers will communicate where a child resides on a learning continuum by indicating the student’s progress toward mastery of each identified grade-level standard.

The standards-based reporting scale:

4 = The student is highly proficient and works consistently at an in-depth and complex level within or beyond the end of year standard*

3 = The student is proficient and meets the grade-level expectation of the standard
2 = The student is nearly proficient and nearly meets the end of year standard
1 = The student is developing and demonstrates limited proficiency on the end of year standard

Important notes about the scale:

• Reporting is based on the end-of-year grade-level expectation. Therefore, proficiency would not be expected in the middle of the school year.
• A “2” represents the expected target for the majority of the school year as this indicates the child is progressing with the standard as expected. A “3” will be given when the student completely meets the grade-level standard.
• Details of what is expected at mastery level can be found on the report card or on the list of assessed grade-level standards.
• A “1” may prompt additional communication from the classroom teacher so parents will better understand their child’s learning journey.

*It is rare that a child will receive a “4” especially at the end of the first semester. A “4” score may prompt additional communication from the classroom teacher to discuss ways he/she is meeting the child’s unique learning needs.

Behavior Learning Targets are approached differently than end-of-year standards. For more information about your child’s progress, contact the classroom teacher.

Parents who have concerns about a student’s well-being are encouraged to reach out to their principal, and to maintain strong lines of communication and partnership between students, families, staff, and other resources.

SafeOregon is also an effective way to report a tip regarding safety threats or potential acts of violence to our students or schools.

https://www.safeoregon.com/

(Students should also be aware that intentionally providing a false report is a serious offense.)