Weekly Memo Week 22, January 16-20, 2017

By Mo decree, we will have school on Tuesday, so get ready.  Use the Winter Weather Carpool, ride the OES bus, take public transportation or just drive slowly and carefully. Do whatever it takes to safely get you to campus.  And then, may we have school for many a planned day to come. Mo sent out her initial letter to parents about reclaiming three schools days; Presidents Day, PGD Day, Good Friday. Though Mo has not made it official yet, I am almost certain that we will be extending the school year to Friday, 6/16. In addition, Mo has asked us all to keep the week of June 19 - 23 available, in case we need to reclaim more school days that week.

COMMUNITY

Professional Plans for 2017-18

Hiring season is upon us.  Please let David know if you are considering other professional plans for the 2017-18 school year or if you are interested in changing grade levels.

Rescheduling Events

We will all be rescheduling missed events.  Please contact Lyn if you need to reschedule a meeting with David.

Lower School Parent Coffees

Lower School will begin hosting a series of winter coffees.  All coffees are from 8:00 – 9:00am and will be held in the Lower School Library.

Prekindergarten and Kindergarten Coffee, Friday 1/20

Main Topic: Primary

Primary and 1st Grade Coffee, Monday, 1/23

Main Topic: Assessments, Progress Reports

2nd and 3rd Grade Coffee, Monday, 1/30

Main Topic: Research???

4th and 5th Grade Coffee, Monday, February 2/6

Main Topic: ERB’s, Executive Function

Re-enrollment Contracts out on 1/23. Due back on 2/7

Admissions is sending re-enrollment contracts out earlier than usual.  If you have any students you want to discuss for possible contract holds before contracts go out, set up a meeting with David and Assistant Head ASAP.

Kiah Job Share

The snow days are wreaking havoc on out efforts to finish the search. The search team and David reconvene this week.

Employment Searches

We have several long term substitute positions to fill. Let me know if you have any recommendations.

Long Term PE Sub - for Jessica’s maternity leave

Long Term 3rd Grade sub -  for Tonya’s maternity leave

Long Term 5th Grade sub -  for Alysa’s sabbatical

LS Religion Teacher, 2nd semester

Callie let David know this week that she will finish teaching Lower School Religion classes at the end of this semester, 1/27.  Her commitments to her US classes and rabbinical work are great than she anticipated. Phillip Craig and I are discussing possibilities.

Only one hire for next year thus far…

LS Chaplain for 2017-18

DECEMBER & JANUARY BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION

On Thursday, January 19th, we are celebrating our colleagues who were born in December and January with chocolate cake and ice cream!

Happy Birthday!

DECEMBER
Burton, Carole	12/6
Finn-Brennan, Kathy	12/23
Graham, Megan	12/14
O’Toole, Chris	12/30
JANUARY
Thompson, Chris	1/1
Sternberg, Ari	1/15
Whitmore, Doug	1/23

Associate Head Candidates

One associate head candidate to go. Please join us at 3:15 in the DVR.

Thursday 1/19 Peter Kraft

Meghana Parasa, 4th grade has withdrawn

The commute from Camas, Washington was too much for the family. She is returning to her local public school.

Admissions Visitors

Admissions is working hard to reschedule visitors. I appreciate your understanding

Specialist Feedback Form

Specialists, you offer a unique perspective on our admissions visitors.  Please take the time to complete a Feedback Form for each visitor you teach.  Thanks.

Upper School Helpers - See Robin Schauffler’s email

Beginning this Thursday, January 5,  Robin Schauffler will be fielding a new team of Upper School students available to perform all types of on-campus service during our Upper School Activity blocks. They’ll do anything—indoors, outdoors, arts & crafts, office work, classroom work, one-on-one tutoring or mentoring, you name it. Here are the times they are available: Every Wednesday, 10:20-10:50 (note that this is only half an hour & adjust your expectations accordingly!) Every Thursday, 10:50-11:50 SST Reminder This is a great time of the year to dig back into all our students who may need a little extra support throughout the day. 1. Check SST Agenda tab in weekly memo 2. If you have contact time with one of the students mentioned - Check SST site if it is noted as updated 3. If a student you have wonderings about but are not listed - contact the relevant person in SST Kirstin/Chris - general support, family engagement and behavioral struggles Melanie - social emotional well being Ari - academics (as well as other learning coordination: OT, SLP, Testing etc.) Elaine - health Heather - Pastoral care, bereavement David - Issues of significant frequency, discipline or life changes

Chapel

• MLK Jr. Focus - Tuesday, 1/17

Recess Alerts

Wet, slushy recesses ahead  Students will need to be properly dressed for outside recess

Library Open 7:30 - 7:50 Each Day

PROGRAM

Faculty Meetings: Faculty Meeting Schedule, Faculty Meeting Agenda

• Thursday, 1/19 - TBD- All LS or BY, IY. Look for email
• Monday, 1/23 - State of School
• Thursday, 1/26 - Playground Plan

Scheduling Team

A scheduling team reunion has been scheduled (!) for Tuesday, January 17th after-school. With the first semester at a close, we wanted to pull together the team behind our new schedule and check in. If you have feedback, please contact a member of the scheduling team: Amy R, Carole, Beth, Chris OT, David, Debra, Kristen, Tina, Tonya, and Tracy.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Events

Claire created this slideshow for 1st/2nd. Chris and Kiah created this slideshow for 3rd/4th/5th Claire, Kiah and Chris are available to share more of our experiences with your class, especially in the Lodge classrooms.

Lara, Dori, and Chris are available to join in or lead class conversations about MLK’s legacy as explore the questions “What words speak to your heart? What words speaks to your mind?” next week. As Lara stated in her email, We are hopeful that you can dedicate time during your classes to reading "Martin's Big Words" by Doreen Rappaport and having your students reflect on these guiding questions. Lara has aso gathered a large collection of books to continue class discussions about the civil rights movement and other African American figures of that time period.

All LS MLK Assembly - We are looking into rescheduling for this Friday.

Monday, January 16:  No School in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. If you know of families doing service, education, or activism in honor of MLK please share Heather W.

Tuesday, January 17:  Chapel services will also be honoring MLK and focus on student voices.

See Dori’s emails for resources and activities around Portland celebrating Dr. King and his work.

Primary Conferences

The next 2-3 weeks are busy ones for Kindergarten teachers as they meet with families to consider Primary or First Grade placement for their children. Because of the timing of both sets of snow days, specialist and SST input was impacted.  Specialists and SST members, if you have any specific feedback about Kindergarten students, please contact Kindergarten teachers with that information this week. Additional conferences make this a full month for Beth, Carole and Deborah; if you can help a Kindergarten teacher with a transition, make a copy for them, or just throw a smile their way this month, please do so!

Playground Update

The Faculty Playground Team met Friday with Michelle Mathis from Learning Landscapes as well as Jon VB, Rudy, Mark, and Rod to review our playground proposal and answer any last questions and concerns. Our next step is prioritize within our budget, then to call our student group back together to discuss how to share out our plan. The snow days have delayed our process but we maintain our goal to have a plan approved and shared with the larger community by the end of the month.

SST on Thursdays

SST meetings are available on Thursdays from 3:15-4:00 for anyone who would like a whole team approach to supporting a student or students. Please contact your Assistant Head to request a Thursday afternoon SST. Also let us know who you’d like to request to attend.

OPERATIONS

Building Issues

David met with Jon von Behren to discuss the following building issues:

• Drinking fountains on 2nd, 3rd floors
• They cannot be adjusted to change angle of water flow
• Jon is looking into installing bottle fillers above the fountains
• Tackable surface on cabinet doors in performance commons, David’s Office
• Tackable surface backordered. Awaiting arrival
• Sound proofing for front entrance
• Jon is looking into solution similar to soundproofing of Band and Choir Rooms
• Anti-slip treatment on outside East stairs
• Treatment on stairs is up to code. Good traction on each step, but the lip of teh stair can get slippery. Place foot firmly on step
• Dog House fix
• SKANSKA will be testing a fix for the dirt and snow issue on the natural vents, starting with screening.  This should reduce debri and snow getting into shaft.
• Playground Budget
• Jon is finalizing his maintenance budget and was cautiously optimistic we would have additional funds for the playground.

Early Dismissal Plan/ Emergency Dismissal Plan

In the future all employees will be expected to remain for at least 30 minutes after the scheduled dismissal time to help with student management.  We will plan for the dismissal of faculty after assessing how many students we have remaining.

Employee Resources

A helpful tool is created in the OES website for employees to save time searching different sites when you need to access the basic forms like check request, catering, maintenance requests and other resources. Check out this link:

Employees Quick Links

Lock Out Drill - See Emergency procedures flipchart (Updated)

The main objective is to secure the perimeter of the building.

• Lock all exterior doors
• Pull blinds on all exterior windows
• Continue learning activities in the classroom
• Report attendance to division office by email or phone

How to reserve a room on the LS Faculty calendar

Did you know you can reserve rooms like the Performance Commons and Flex Classroom through Google calendar?  You add a new event, and where you would normally invite guests you click the word 'rooms.' If the the name of the room is visible on the list, it's available and you can click on it to reserve it.  It will then appear in your 'location' box.  If you don't see the room on the list, it's because it's already reserved.  If you really need it (for a performance, for example) and are wondering if you can work out a deal with the person who has reserved it, Jeffrey and Debra have access to the room calendars.

ADP Tutorial

For help on any ADP related matters: login or registration, password retrieval, or time card approval process, please view this beautiful presentation that Ed Cecere put together.  This is a helpful guide and should answer your ADP related questions.   If you still have problems after using Ed’s helpful guide, please let Veena: iyengarve@oes.edu know.  There is a plan to put the ADP resource link in the LS Employee Resource page for future reference. Stay tune.

Your Announcements

Send any announcements you have for faculty to Kirstin, Chris or David by Thursday each week and we will include them in the Weekly Memo.  This should help reduce the number of emails we are receiving, and maximize our time to collaborate during meetings.