Jordan School District
Schools have the option of having teachers track their summer school work time in True Time rather than on timesheets. If you would like to do this, please send a list of your teachers to Keelee Leuluai and note that the list is for summer school. Instructions for using True Time can be found here.
It is expected that all ESP employees will use True Time to track their work for summer school. Please send a list of ESP employees participating in summer school to Keelee Leuluai.
Please share with your families the flyer about our Family Resource Fair. Food, district resources, and information will be available for families that drive by at the locations.
Dear Educators,
We would like to share a new professional learning opportunity with you called Utah Microcredentials. This resource is supported and funded by the Utah State Board of Education (USBE) and is available to all educators in Utah’s public education system, including teachers, instructional coaches, paraprofessionals, counselors, related service providers, administrators, and other educators.
Microcredentials acknowledge all the different types of professional learning that educators do, both formal, traditional courses and independent, self-directed learning. Realizing that educators are continually honing their craft, Utah Microcredentials provides a way to recognize that learning. Microcredentials represent instructional skills and concepts. A microcredential is competency-based recognition that the holder has demonstrated effective and consistent use of the target skill or concept as a part of their practice. Microcredentials are not earned through seat time, assignments, or tests. They are earned by submitting the required evidence for a specific microcredential on the target skill or concept.
Each Utah Microcredential is worth a 0.5 USBE credit, which may be used for relicensing and for salary changes in certain districts/charters. The cost for each is $20. Earning microcredentials is also a way to demonstrate leadership. Posting earned microcredentials on your webpage, social media, and even outside your door is an invitation to share your skills with others. For more information, you can use these resources:
You can start earning Utah Microcredentials on MIDAS. Thank you for all your hard work and dedication to supporting learning for our Utah students.
DATE:
April 30, 2021
TO:
High School Principals
Assistant Principals Responsible for Driver Education
FROM:
Brad Sorensen, Administrator of Schools
SUBJECT:
Reduction of .125 FTE Preparation Period for Driver Education
Beginning the 2022-23 school year, the previously allocated .125 FTE for a Driver Education preparation period will no longer be allocated. It has been funded through the Driver Education budget which has its own budgeting system that should sustain its program costs and has not been able to do so for the last several years. The overall budget balance continues to decrease at a rapid rate.
Schools will be able to choose if they would like to continue to make additional preparation time available for their Driver Education program. If it is decided at the school level to do so, the funding will need to be through the school’s regular allocated funding sources. As a reminder, the district does provide the high school sixteen $500 department chair stipends that can be used for your Driver Education chairperson.
Because we value the opportunity for students to participate in this program during their regular school day schedule as well as doing everything we can to maintain our current pay schedule for the employees involved in the program, it was determined that discontinuing the .125 would be the best way to move forward and balance our budget while continuing to monitor the following factors:
Davis School District is hosting their Intermountain AP Summer Institute in an online format. This could be an option to offer your faculty quality professional development approved by the College Board at a significant cost savings compared to the typical on-site offerings.
Please see the following information for the Intermountain AP Summer Institute This local institute for 4 days of instruction from some of the best College Board consultants. The institute will be held online from Tuesday, July 6 to Friday, July 9 and the cost is only $500. Two hours of graduate credit is available for only $30.
There are also additional institutes available Please see the following link for more details on institutes https://apcentral.collegeboard.org/professional-development/workshops-summer-institutes/about-summer-institutes
See flyer below for suggestions regarding being more active and involved in improving the safety of our workplace.
DATE:
May 3, 2021
TO:
School Psychologists, Elementary Counselors, and School Social Workers
FROM:
Michael Anderson, Associate Superintendent
Travis Hamblin, Director of Student Services
Fulvia Franco, Program Specialist – Guidance
SUBJECT:
May School Psychologist, Elementary Counselor, and School Social Workers Meeting
A virtual meeting for school psychologists, elementary counselors, and school social workers has been scheduled for Friday, May 14, 2021, from 12:30 to 3:30 p.m. Melissa Heath, Ph.D. will provide us with a presentation on Strengthening Youth with Supportive Stories and Metaphors, and Ben Springer, Ph.D., BCBA-D will provide us with the following presentation: Happy Kids Don’t Punch You in the Face.
Part-time Staff: I would appreciate it if you could adjust your schedules in order to attend this meeting.
cc:
Principals
Attention Secondary Schools:
We have excess corrugated plastic in 4' x 8' sheets that we are collecting from the elementary schools. These would be great to use by clubs, organizations, teams, theater groups, etc. to make signs. Corrugated plastic can be scored and cut on one side and then folded to make 3-dimensional barriers. They are most familiar as yard signs for student activities recognition or political advertising. If you are interested, please contact Kris Wishart in Purchasing with quantities you would be interested in. Otherwise we will surplus to the public and sell them.
Attached is a photo of what we have available.
Regards,
Central Warehouse
Multiple Federal agencies are investigating numerous fraud schemes targeting the unemployment insurance (UI) programs across the United States. Fraudsters, some of which are transnational criminal organizations, are using the stolen identities of U.S. citizens to open accounts and file fraudulent claims for benefits, exploiting the unprecedented expansion of the benefits provided in response to economic disruption caused by the COVID-19 Pandemic.
Many victims of this crime have no knowledge that criminals have applied for UI benefits in their name. You may only discover that you were a victim of this crime upon seeing the following red flags:
The District Human Resource department is taking immediate steps to address suspected fraudulent claims. These include:
For more information or if you believe you may be impacted, please visit the following websites for information on reporting fraud and protecting your credit.
Utah Attorney General (https://www.identitytheft.gov/UnemploymentInsurance)
“Unemployment Insurance Fraud Consumer Protection Guide” (https://www.oig.dol.gov/public/Unemployment%20Insurance%20Fraud%20Consumer%20Protection%20Guide,%20Final.pdf)
Office of Inspector General for the U.S. Department of Labor (https://www.oig.dol.gov/public/media/DOL-OIG%20UI%20Fraud%20Alert.pdf)
DATE:
April 27, 2021
TO:
Secondary Principals
Secondary Media Specialists
FROM:
Administrators of Schools
Dr. Shelley Nordick, Administrator, Curriculum/Staff Development
Norman Emerson, Instructional Support Services/Fine Arts Consultant
SUBJECT:
Networking Meetings for Secondary Media Specialists
In order to prepare and train secondary library media specialists to effectively provide services to their schools and to build consistency across the District’s library programs, several networking meetings have been scheduled for the 2021-22 school year. The participation of your media specialists in these meetings is appreciated.
The meetings will be held on the following dates from 8:00 a.m.-11:30 a.m.:
Please share this information with your school’s teacher-librarian.
Please feel free to contact Norman Emerson (801-567-8364) if further information is needed. Thank you for your continued support of the library media programs in Jordan District.
Administrators & Program Directors:
As we are beginning to make plans for the 2021-22 school year, we wanted to remind you about the master calendar for the district. You can find it on mastercal.jordandistrict.org. This calendar is intended to inform Principals, Administrators & District personnel of district events and due dates (it does not include individual school events).
If you would like to copy anything on this calendar to your personal google calendar, simply click on the “see more details” link and then copy it using the 3 vertical dot (options) button.
To search for an item in the master calendar, you can use Command+F (Apple) or Control+F (PC). This will bring up a search bar where you can type a few key words to help you find the information you are seeking.
if you would like to add a district event or make a revision to the master calendar, please contact Lisa LeStarge at 801-567-8186 or lisa.lestarge@jordandistrict.org.
Performance evaluations for part-time ESP employees for the 2020-21 school year are optional. However, the evaluation documents you provide can be crucial in justifying employee terminations and potential unemployment claims.
Please review the included evaluation description memo and the evaluation form for instructions. Please contact Brent Burge at 88224 if you have any questions.
All ESP employees are considered non-exempt and are eligible for overtime and/or comp time if they work over 40 hours in any work week. Please view the included memo which summarizes the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) in regards to overtime and comp time. Also included are the procedures for accumulating, tracking and using accrued comp time.
If you have any questions, please contact Brent Burge at 88224.
FRAUD ALERT. We've received reports of individuals reproducing and presenting these mask exemption cards with the state of Utah seal on them to businesses and schools. These are FAKE. The state of Utah, UDOH, and local health departments do NOT provide mask exemption cards. Mask exemptions and how to obtain them are outlined in the public health orders here: https://bit.ly/3dUxOKY and here (schools): https://bit.ly/3g9oFRA.
Many people are aware that computer hardware gets old and becomes unusable in a secure environment. What is not so well known is that computer software also gets out of date, resulting in vulnerability to malicious attacks. These vulnerabilities affect not only the software, but also all data on the machine, and even the network it is connected to. Through monitoring equipment in Information Systems, we see thousands of these attacks occurring on a daily basis.
To keep our district's data and systems secure, Information Systems has performed a district-wide audit for installations of one of the most frequently attacked pieces of software - Microsoft Office. All schools have versions of this software that are out of date and vulnerable to attack. Some schools have only a few licenses that are out-of-date, while other schools have hundreds.
We are informing you of this dilemma now so that you can plan to allocate an appropriate amount of your technology funds to replace older, unsupported licenses of Microsoft Office, and keep your data and machines secure. To find out how many licenses you will need to replace, contact your building computer technician. Microsoft Office for Education licenses currently cost $46.05 each. Please purchase the number of licenses necessary, then let your tech know that they have been purchased. The tech will thereafter update the associated software. To ensure licensing compliance, techs have been instructed to upgrade licenses only after being shown proof of purchase.
Alternatively, if you would prefer to save money, there are free alternatives to Microsoft Office, most notably Google Docs. As with many free offerings, there are advantages and limitations to the use of Google Docs. Nevertheless, it is an alternative that many educators use, and it is free of charge. It is important to realize that even if you choose to use Google Docs, older unsupported versions of Microsoft Office cannot remain installed on machines. In this situation, techs will remove those outdated licenses, and users will be free to use Google docs without purchase or further installation.
Thank you for your concern and cooperation in maintaining the security of our collective computing environment, and the very sensitive data it contains.
Mark Sowa, Instructional Technology Manager
We are excited to announce a new hotline created to assist REDCap users. Examples of assistance include:
The hotline is available Monday through Friday from 12 p.m. to 6 p.m. at (385) 286-0296 or toll-free at 1-855-222-7531 (Select Option #3).
Additionally, email assistance is provided Monday - Friday 8 a.m.- 5 p.m. at REDCap_notifications@utah.gov. Our team typically responds to these emails within 1 business day.
To request assistance for testing events including onsite REDCap resources, please submit this form.
Thank you for your partnership,
Utah Department of Health REDCap (K-12 Testing) Team
The Emergency Broadband Benefit is an FCC program to help households struggling to pay for internet service during the pandemic. This new benefit will connect eligible households to jobs, critical healthcare services, and virtual classrooms.
The Emergency Broadband Benefit will provide a discount of up to $50 per month towards broadband service for eligible households and up to $75 per month for households on Tribal lands. Eligible households can also receive a one-time discount of up to $100 to purchase a laptop, desktop computer, or tablet from participating providers if they contribute $10-$50 toward the purchase price.
The Emergency Broadband Benefit is limited to one monthly service discount and one device discount per household.
Who Is Eligible for the Emergency Broadband Benefit Program?
A household is eligible if one member of the household meets at least one of the criteria below:
When Can Families Sign Up for the Benefit?
The program has been authorized by the FCC, but the start date has not yet been established. The FCC is working to make the benefit available as quickly as possible.
Check out the Broadband Benefit Consumer FAQ for more information about the benefit and please continue to check this page for program updates.
Schools are encouraged to DROP, COVER and HOLD during the statewide earthquake drill on Thursday, April 15, 2021, at 10:15 a.m., or on another date that may be more convenient.
Over 670,000 citizens, businesses and schools have already registered to participate in the drill on 4/15/21 (registration not required): https://www.shakeout.org/utah/register/
Considerations:
More Information:
In continuation of our 19 year tradition of celebrating prevention and resilience in Utah schools, the state-wide program, Resilient Utah and KUTV Channel 2 are proud to host 2021 Resilient Utah Month in May! Our month-long celebration will feature the 2020-21 Resilient Utah Education Shield Awards, which will be presented to select schools and individuals that have set extraordinary examples in building resilience and spreading hope within their schools, homes and communities.
NOMINATE NOW!
Here’s an opportunity to recognize efforts in your schools that strengthen and promote resilience in these challenging times! Each nomination should take less than 10 minutes to complete. Feel free to nominate in any of the 8 categories. Nominations are due Friday, April 23, 2021. Please pass this on to your staff, volunteers or networks.
Awards will be announced on KUTV Channel 2, in addition to being publicized through social media and education networks. Award recipients will receive an honorary plaque, in addition to a special gift package.
To nominate, click on the following link:
https://www.resilientutah.org/nominate/
Thank you for all you do to strengthen the lives of Utah families!
The Resilient Utah Team
www.ResilientUtah.org
