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TO:  
All Administrators

FROM:
Jordan School District Cabinet Members

The Administrative Leadership Conference is scheduled for Tuesday, August 4, 2026, and Thursday, August 6, 2026.

  • Time: Breakfast at 7:30 AM, Conference begins at 8:00 AM
  • Location: West Hills Middle School, 8270 S Grizzly Way (5400 W), West Jordan

Administrative Leadership Conference Workshops

See the Workshop Program Information document for descriptions of the workshops before registering for the sessions you'd like to attend. Please register for Workshop Sessions by June 30th.

  • Workshop sessions will be limited to 25 participants, unless otherwise noted. Please register early.
  • Many sessions will require you to bring your own device - a laptop, Chromebook, or iPad
  • All Administrators are expected to attend the workshop sessions 3-6 on Thursday.
  • Principals’ level meeting will be held on August 6th from 8:00 AM - 9:30 AM.
  • Principals will attend 3 workshops after the principal meeting (Sessions 4, 5, 6).

 

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TO:
All Administrators

FROM:
Michael Anderson, Associate Superintendent
Brad Sorensen, Administrator of Schools
Cody Curtis, Administrator of Schools
Odette Desmarais, Administrator of Schools
Meredith Doleac, Administrator of Schools
Becky Gerber, Administrator of Schools
Lisa Robinson, Administrator of Schools
April Gaydosh, Administrator of Human Resources

This is a mandatory 2-day in-person training for all administrators.

DATES:  The trainings will run June 10 & 11 or June 17 & 18, 2026

LOCATION:  JATC-S Building

TIME:  8:00-3:30 pm each day

Lunch will be on your own. Please see the attached agenda for more details.

Click HERE to see which training date you signed up for.

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TO:
Principals

FROM:
Lisa Robinson, Administrator of Schools
Kim Lloyd, Director of Special Education
Brian King, Assistant Director of Special Education
Mike Trimmell, Special Education Administrator

Jordan School District Special Education Summer Conference 2026

The Special Education Summer Conference for the 2026-27 school year will be held on Wednesday, August 5, 2026, at West Jordan Middle School. Check-in begins at 7:30 am and the conference begins at 8:00 am. Attendees will receive a $200 stipend, and lunch will be provided. Administrators are also welcome to attend. There will be sessions specifically for Administrators throughout the day.

All Certified/Licensed Special Education staff and school administrators are invited to attend. Please register through PD Catalog by July 31st.

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact your teacher specialist.

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TO:
Elementary Principals

FROM:
Carolyn Gough, Administrator of Teaching & Learning

We have secured one-time funding to purchase K–3 literacy software licenses for summer 2026 and the 2026–27 school year.

Please note an update to the announcement made at the May principals meeting: these licenses may be used in the classroom during the 2026–27 school year, rather than being restricted to home use. Classroom implementation will align with the STEM Action Center grants for math software licenses for the 2026-2027 school year.

License Distribution & Next Steps

  • Existing Requests: If you submitted a Google request form, you will receive the number of licenses you indicated.
  • New Requests: If you did not originally request licenses but would now like them for classroom use, we will provide them based on availability.

To request remaining licenses, please contact Brittney Eldredge at 801-567-8161.

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DATE:
May 28, 2026

TO:
All Elementary School Administrators

FROM:
Carolyn Gough, Administrator of Teaching and Learning
Ben Jameson, Director of Assessment, Research and Accountability

SUBJECT:
Changes to Acadience Testing for the 2026-27 School Year

As the 2025-26 school year draws to an end, elementary school administrators should be aware of some changes to Acadience testing. Principals are encouraged to forward this information to relevant personnel.

Acadience Math:
USBE's contract with Acadience Learning for Acadience Math ends on June 30, 2026. During the 2026 legislative session, the legislature did not appropriate funding for the continuation of Acadience Math testing. Thus, Jordan School District will not be administering Acadience Math in grades K-3 for the 2026-27 school year.

Acadience Reading:
Acadience Reading will be administered to students in grades K-3 by district assessment assistants as in years past. Schools will continue to be responsible for administering Acadience Reading for grades 4-6. All Acadience Reading testing results may still be found in ALO.

Data analysis from prior years has indicated that a kindergarten student's scale score and pathways of progress score is impacted by when that student tests during the BOY and EOY windows. To a lesser degree, first grade students are also impacted by when they test.

This year, 23 schools participated in a kindergarten testing pilot that separated kindergarten benchmark testing from grades 1-3 testing with the goal of lengthening the instructional days between BOY and EOY assessments to better capture the full breadth of literacy learning and growth:

  • For schools scheduled at the end of the BOY window: Kindergarten students were tested at the beginning of the BOY window while grades 1-3 were tested during their regularly scheduled testing time.
  • For schools scheduled at the beginning of the EOY window: Kindergarten students were tested at the end of the EOY window while grades 1-3 were tested during their regularly scheduled time.

Preliminary analysis of the 2025-26 Acadience Reading data indicates that lengthening the instructional days between BOY and EOY benchmark testing provided more reliable benchmark scores at BOY as well as pathways of progress scores at EOY.

Thus, Assessment, Research & Accountability will be administering the Acadience Reading benchmark to all kindergarten students, as well as first grade students, at the beginning of the BOY window and end of the EOY window for the 2026-27 school year. This means that for the BOY and EOY windows, district assessment assistants will come to your schools once to complete K-1 testing and again to complete grades 2-3 testing at different times of each window. During the MOY window, we will complete testing for K-3 together.

In the next day or two, you will start receiving your testing schedule for the 2026-27 school year. Please take note of the two separate testing dates for the BOY and EOY windows.

More information about these changes will be released at a later date. In the meantime, if you have questions, please contact Ben Jameson in Assessment, Research & Accountability.

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TO:
Administrators

FROM:
Carolyn Gough, Director of Teaching and Learning
Jared Covili, Consultant Digital Teaching and Learning

Please join USBE and Google for Education for a series of webinars to help K12 and higher education leaders explore how to deploy AI in safe, effective, and practical ways. These sessions are free and open to all Utah education leaders.

Week of July 13th
AI on Campus - A Practical Guide to Integrity, Policy, and Career Readiness

Week of July 20th
Gemini for Your Campus: A Technical Guide to Deployment and Security

Week of July 27th
The Google AI-Powered Researcher: From Grant Proposal to Final Draft
Inclusive by Design: Using Google AI to Enhance Accessibility and UDL

Week of August 3rd
Gemini for Your Campus: A Technical Guide to Deployment and Security

Week of August 10th
Meet a Google Engineer: Q & A

More information including invites and links to be sent two weeks ahead of the first session. Register in the form at the following link: AI in Education: Leadership Training Series Registration.

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TO:
Administrators
ELD Leads
Staff

FROM:
Mike Anderson, Associate Superintendent
Michelle Love-Day, Director and Language Teacher Specialists

Language and Culture Services wants to make sure you have all of the information at hand to share with your families on WIDA data. In accordance with Title III compliance, we want to ensure the steps are followed to send home the score reports and notification letters. In the document here, you will find those steps along with guidance on compliance and comparing growth data. We also know that many of you will be celebrating the success with your students that have reached proficiency in WIDA. We have added a final tab to have some language that you can use so that everyone, including the ML learner, knows the importance of this test. We would love to attend any of those celebrations, so please let your language teacher specialist and director know. Thank you for all of your hard work this year and being a superhero for our super amazing multilingual students!

Document link here

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TO:
High School Principals
High School Registrars

FROM:
Steffany Ellsworth, Support Services Manager

Information Systems will be populating the Graduation date and Grad/Dipl status to GR on Friday, May 29, for all active seniors who don’t already have a code. The graduation date for every senior who has not withdrawn will be June 4, 2026, even if graduation is being held another day.

If you have any senior who is not receiving a regular diploma, you can start entering their graduation status and date at any time. It is not necessary to wait for this utility to be run, as the utility will not override any existing graduation status or date. Should you choose to wait until after we run the utility to update students not receiving a GR, we will notify you when it has been completed. For those students, you will need to remove the graduation status and date from their profile screen and make sure the drop down next to Graduated is set to “No”.

Every senior needs to have a grad status and here are the possibilities:

GQ – Regular Diploma with Math Competency
GP – Students who have not met graduation requirements at the end of the school year, but plan to complete graduation requirements by October 1, 2026, including adult diplomas.
DO – Students who have not met graduation requirements at the end of the school year and do not intend to do so.
GA – Special Ed students who completed the graduation requirements for an alternate diploma, as reported to you by the Special Ed department.
RT – Special Ed students who will be attending South Valley or Kauri Sue, as reported to you by the Special Ed department.
GC – Students who have already earned the Carnegie unit diploma.
GG – Students who have earned their GED.

If the student has completed the math requirements to receive a diploma with math competency, you will need to change the code to GQ.

As soon as a student that has been identified as GP has completed the graduation requirements, the code will need to be changed to GR or GQ as appropriate, and the graduation date will be the date the student has completed coursework. The GP status should also be used for students that are still enrolled at the end of the school year and intend to receive an adult diploma.

For students who previously withdrew intending to receive an adult diploma: If they earn the Carnegie unit diploma enter a Grad/Dipl Status of GC. If they earn their GED enter a code of GG. For these students you should leave the Graduated field set to “No” but enter the date they earned the diploma.

For Special Ed students, if the student has completed the requirements to receive an alternate diploma the code is GA. Do not mark students as GA without being instructed by Special Ed that the student has completed the necessary requirements. If the Special Ed student is a retained senior going to South Valley or Kauri Sue, the code to use is RT. Please note, it is possible for a special ed student to earn the alternate diploma and still enroll in South Valley or Kauri Sue for next year. These students should receive the GA code not the RT code. Again, do not mark students as GA without being instructed by Special Ed whether they are continuing next year or not.

We are aware that many of your Foreign Exchange students will be leaving the country before the transcripts are posted and uploaded to Parchment. I have spoken to Parchment and foreign exchange students can order their transcripts through Parchment after they have been posted. Transcripts will be posted to Parchment by June 17.

Please contact the IS Helpdesk at 801-567-8737 if you have any questions.

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TO:
All Administrators

FROM:
Carolyn Gough, Administrator of Teaching and Learning

Now Available! JSD Portrait of a Graduate Proficiency Scales

Based on the district’s strategic plan, Jordan District teacher teams have now completed proficiency scales for Portrait of a Graduate characteristics by grade bands. 

To access the Portrait of a Graduate characteristics and accompanying scales along with resources for planning, instruction, assessment, and feedback, enroll in the new JSD Portrait of a Graduate Proficiency Scales Canvas course.

Key Details:

  • Ongoing Updates: Additional resources will be added directly to the Canvas course.
  • Feedback: A link is embedded in the course for submitting questions, commentary, or resource suggestions.
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TO:
All Administrators

FROM:
Carolyn Gough, Administrator of Teaching and Learning

Now Available! JSD Content Proficiency Scales

Together, district teacher teams and Teaching & Learning have developed power standards and corresponding proficiency scales for Language Arts, Math, Science, Social Studies, PE, Health, and Music (with more subjects coming soon). These scales serve as exemplars and anchors for grade-level expectations, ensuring Level 3 indicators align precisely with the depth and rigor of the Utah Core Standards.

To access the standards, scales, and integration resources for planning, instruction, assessment, and feedback, enroll in the new JSD Content Proficiency Scales Canvas course.

Key Details:

  • Ongoing Updates: Additional resources will be added directly to the Canvas course.
  • Feedback: A link is embedded in the course for submitting questions, commentary, or resource suggestions.
  • More Info: Please review the Canvas homepage for additional details.

⚠️ Important Note on Math Standards: The State Board of Education (USBE) is currently reviewing math standards and is expected to release updates soon. Consequently, the development of math power standards and proficiency scales is paused until those official updates are released.

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TO:
All Principals
All Assistant Principals

FROM:
Administrators of Schools

Please share the attached flyer with the future school leaders in your building.

The BYU School Leadership Program invites educators to learn from current school, district, state, and university leaders about becoming a principal. The Academy is a great way to get a taste of school leadership and learn best practices for applying to principal preparation programs and future leadership positions. The district will cover the cost of your substitute teacher, and BYU will award a $1,000 scholarship to any participants who are accepted to and attend BYU’s Masters of School Leadership Program.

APPLY BY AUGUST 28, 2026.

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TO:
All Administrators
All Administrative Assistants

FROM:
April Gaydosh, Administrator of Human Resources
Brent Burge, HR Administrator

Important Update to FMLA Leave Calculation Method

We would like to inform employees of an upcoming change to the District’s Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) leave calculation method.

Effective July, 27, 2026, the District will transition from using a fixed 12-month calendar method to a rolling 12-month period from the date FMLA leave is used.

Under the rolling 12-month method, each time an employee uses FMLA leave, the District will look back 12 months to determine how much FMLA leave has already been used and how much remains available. This method is permitted under federal FMLA regulations and is intended to provide a more consistent and equitable administration of leave benefits.

This change may affect how available FMLA leave is calculated for employees who have previously used FMLA leave within the prior 12 months.

If you have questions regarding your FMLA eligibility or available leave balances, please contact Human Resources at leaves@jordandistrict.org or 801-567-8429.

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DATE: 
Thursday, May 28, 2026

TO: 
High School Administrators

FROM:
Carolyn Gough, Administrator of Teaching & Learning
Ben Jameson, Director of Assessment, Research and Accountability

SUBJECT:
Research Project

The Research Review Committee has reviewed a research project in which your school has been asked to participate.

Project Title: Coaching Styles and Their Impact on Athlete Satisfaction: Youth Sports

Applicant: Micah Giles, Weber State University

The project has been approved by the District Research Review Committee.  The applicant has been directed to contact you to discuss the extent of the project.  Participation in the study is at your discretion.  If you have questions or concerns relating to participation, please contact Ben Jameson at 801-567-8243.

The project will entail the posting of a recruitment flyer on school community boards and/or in school locker rooms.

Thank you for your assistance.

 

 

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TO:
Elementary Administrators

FROM:
Carolyn Gough, Administrator of Teaching and Learning
Mandy Thurman, Elementary Language Arts Consultant of Teaching and Learning
Michelle Lovell, Elementary Language Arts Consultant of Teaching and Learning

Save the date and share the following optional professional development opportunity with your teachers.

Literacy Live: Grades K–6 Fall Conference will be offered during the district’s first teacher professional development day on September 25, 2026. This engaging learning experience is designed to support K–6 educators through breakout sessions focused on effective literacy instruction, practical classroom strategies, and implementation-ready resources. Participants will also have opportunities for collaboration, networking, and prize drawings throughout the event.

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TO:
All Administrators

FROM:
Carolyn Gough, Administrator of Teaching and Learning

The Utah State Board of Education (USBE) has selected a new platform to support the Professional Learning credit tracking and registration system, Recommended Instructional Materials (RIMS), and Microcredentials (formerly MIDAS). 

MIDAS will go into an inactive status at 11:59 pm on June 9th. No new work or continuing work will be allowed in the MIDAS system after this time.
Please consider completing the following items in the MIDAS system by 11:59 pm on June 9, 2026:

  • Adding new professional learning courses or sections to an existing course happening June 1- July 20 that require registration
  • Register for professional learning courses that are currently available
  • Award credit or relicensure points for a course that has ended or will end by June 8th  
  • Microcredential submissions or resubmissions (please note it will not be reviewed or approved during the inactive time)
  • Reviewing microcredentials in your review queue (microcredential reviewers only)

The current MIDAS system will not be accessible after June 30, 2026. 

Educators will still have access to their transcripts while MIDAS is inactive.
Directions for downloading a transcript in MIDAS:

  • Log in to MIDAS 
  • Click on My Profile
  • Click on PD Transcript
  • Click on the red "Print Transcript" button
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DATE:
May 21, 2026

TO:
Middle School Principals

FROM:
Scott Thomas, Administrator of Auxiliary Services
Paul Bergera, Director of Transportation
Kittisack Soumpholphakdy, Field/Activity Trips Coordinator

SUBJECT:
Lagoon Day – Monday, June 1, 2026

We look forward to helping you provide an exciting, successful, and safe experience for your students at Lagoon this year. Following the same procedure as last year, we encourage you and your staff to load buses as they arrive at your school. As each bus is loaded with an advisor/chaperone on board, please let it depart for Lagoon. There is no need to wait for all buses to arrive, then leave together. Your assistance with this process last year helped alleviate much of the unnecessary waiting on the bus and congestion at the ticket gates.

Your assigned bus driver may ask you to verify the condition of the bus before boarding students, then at Lagoon and finally when they return to the school. This is to make sure no students or personal property are left on the bus. This is also to ensure the bus has remained clean and trash has been properly discarded. Again, please ask your students and advisors/chaperones to take everything off the bus with them once it arrives at Lagoon. It is extremely unlikely that the same bus that transports your students and advisors/chaperones to Lagoon will be the same bus that transports students and advisors/chaperones back to their school. If the temperature exceeds 85º F, load a cooler with ice and water bottles on one of the buses at your school in the event heat and potential delays become an issue as students are waiting to board buses at Lagoon. Your cooler will be returned within a few weeks.

As the day comes to a conclusion, plan on buses arriving back to Lagoon at 5:00 p.m. For the safety of everyone involved, please make sure all designated advisors/chaperones report to their assigned school bus loading area at 4:45 p.m. Students will then load at 5:00 p.m. with all buses departing by 5:15 p.m.

As a reminder, instructions and signs will be posted on the North side of Lagoon in the employee area. Look for your school’s sign, which will be visible on large cones at the same location where buses unloaded at Lagoon during morning drop off. Each advisor/chaperone will be given a colored paddle. When your school has 50 students and at least one advisor/chaperone, we will load the bus. Once a group of your school’s students and advisor/chaperone head to the designated bus, please ask the advisor/chaperone to pass the paddle to the next advisor.

Thank you for your support and cooperation.
Jordan School District Transportation

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TO:
All Administrators

FROM:
Bonnie Brennan, Director of Insurance Services

Please let your employees know that the Benefits Open Enrollment dates have changed.  This year, open enrollment will be held from July 20, 2026 - August 20, 2026, and all changes will be effective September 1, 2026. You will also be receiving posters like the attached flyer.  Please post them where your staff will see them.

If you or any of your staff have questions, please have them reach out to Insurance Services, insurance@jordandistrict.org, (801) 567-8146. Thank you.

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