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Category: Other Administrators

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On Thursday, April 20, 2023, at 10:15 a.m. a million Utahns will “Drop, Cover, and Hold On” in the annual Great Utah ShakeOut Earthquake Drill.

All schools are encouraged to participate in this drill, or to conduct an earthquake drill sometime in the month of April.  This is an opportunity to incorporate emergency preparedness in classroom lessons and to include proper ways to protect oneself during an earthquake.

Schools can register to participate in the Great Utah ShakeOut, at: www.ShakeOut.org/Utah.  After registering your school, you can also review the “PLAN YOUR DRILL” section at the bottom left of the Webpage.

Please review the Jordan School District Incident Command Manual - Earthquake Action Plan and Standard Operating Guidelines for planning, drilling and responding to an earthquake.  The manual is located in the JSD Incident Command Folder on Google Drive, link: Incident Command Folder.   Bookmark for future reference.

Please plan and prepare to take part in this statewide earthquake drill.  Remember to report your drill and related meetings using the Jordan School District, link: 2022-23 REPORT EMERGENCY - DRILLS, ACTUAL EVENTS, or MEETINGS on Google Drive.  Bookmark for future reporting.

Please contact the JSD Emergency Operations Manager Lance Everill with questions, etc.:    Office 801-567-8623, lance.everill@jordandistrict.org

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The following are new administrative assignments:

New Assignments effective July 1, 2023:

  • Julie Scherzinger, assistant principal at Herriman High appointed CTE consultant in the Career & Technical Education department.
  • Michael Trimmell, principal at Riverside Elementary appointed consultant in the Special Education department.
  • Amanda Edwards, principal at Bastian Elementary appointed principal at Riverside Elementary.
  • Jessica Stowe, assistant principal at Heartland Elementary appointed principal at Bastian Elementary.

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Every student deserves to be taught by an accomplished teacher. National Board Certification was designed to develop, retain and recognize accomplished teachers and to generate ongoing improvement in schools nationwide. It’s the highest certification a teacher may obtain in addition to being the most respected one.

Perks for teachers:

  • Jordan District will pay NBCTs a stipend of $2,400 per year
  • USBE offers grants through TSSP funds to cover costs
  • USBE provides classroom teacher bonus for NBCT: $1,000 for classroom teacher, $2,000 for Title 1 classroom teachers.
  • USBE Educator Incentive Programs
  • NBPTS Support

Teachers who have gone through the Board certification process say that it is the most valuable and transformative professional development they have ever received. The opportunity to connect professional learning with classroom practice brings to life a teacher’s experience, helping them reflect on individual student learning needs.

Contact Amy Wood with questions: amy.wood@jordandistrict.org

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Click below to complete the end-of-year Digital Teaching & Learning Survey from USBE. This survey will help us determine technology needs for the 2023-2024 school year. The survey is due by 4/28/23.

USBE Survey Link

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The Leading School Summit will include administrators from across the state who are looking to strengthen the impact of digital learning and PCBL in their schools. This is a FREE conference, so sign up today!

Click HERE for more information and to register.

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As you plan your April 21st, PD day, let Language and Culture services help you in filling in areas of conversation you need for your ML learners and climate and culture of your school. We have 3 different PD's to chose from. Your school can select all three or just one. You can have grade levels join together or individually. We hope we can be a resource for you and your school. Please RSVP by clicking HERE

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DATE: 
March 9, 2023

TO:  
All Administrators

FROM: 
Michael Anderson, Associate Superintendent
Travis Hamblin, Director of Student Services
McKinley Withers, Health and Wellness

SUBJECT: 
Wellness Accelerator Event

You and your staff are invited to a Wellness Accelerator Event at JATC South Auditorium on April 14th, from 1:30-3:30.

The 2023 Wellness Accelerator is an opportunity to learn from passionate educators like you. There will be a variety of topics covered through brief, prepared table-top discussions from educators around Jordan District on strategies for student and staff wellness. Participants should plan on walking away with practical ways to enhance wellness for yourself and others!

Who should attend? You! Jordan School District administrators, school leaders, and staff committed to SEL/wellness initiatives (substitutes can be provided upon request) are invited to attend.

Review the attached flyer and share with those that would benefit from attending.

Please contact McKinley Withers (mckinley.withers@jordandistrict.org) for additional information and questions.

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We are excited to announce our in-person, Jordan School District Special Education Transition Fair for 2023 and would love for you to join us! There will be over twenty community resources attending to help answer any post-secondary questions for our students and families.

The Transition Fair will be held on Monday, April 10, 2023 from 4:00 - 7:00 p.m. at the Jordan School District Auxiliary Services building (7905 South Redwood Road, West Jordan, UT 84088).

We hope that you will be able to attend! For questions please contact Ashley Calhoun Transition Specialist at 801-567-8208 or ashley.calhoun@jordandistrict.org,

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Criminals are getting more and more creative and bold and are finding new ways to try to steal freight from our schools.

One of our schools had an incident recently after receiving several boxes through UPS from Apple Computers. The boxes legitimately belonged to the school, and all shipping labels had the school name on them. An unidentified woman came in shortly after the delivery claiming she was instructed by the freight company to pick up her items from the school. She had a printout of tracking numbers that matched the computers! Long story short, the school did not give her their computers even after she threatened to get the police involved. If this ever happens at one of your schools or locations, yes, call the police!

Please watch for this or similar situations to happen at your location. The picture below is what the fraudster tried to provide to the school as “proof” the boxes were hers. Note that she is not showing the “entire email”, and there is no reference to Apple or UPS with a legitimate looking email address.

If in doubt, please contact Purchasing, as we may have additional shipping or tracking information from the vendors or can help you obtain it to verify that a shipment belongs to your school or department and not a person coming in off the street. We also recommend locking unopened freight in a room until it can be opened or distributed, and not in easy reach of those coming into the building.

Stay aware and stay safe! Please contact Purchasing if you need assistance or have questions on receiving freight or if you need help legitimizing claims such as this.

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DATE:
March 9, 2023

TO:  
All Administrators

FROM:  
Michael Anderson, Associate Superintendent
Travis Hamblin, Director of Student Services
McKinley Withers, Health and Wellness
Angie Rasmussen, Student Safety & Wellness Specialist

SUBJECT:  
Management of SafeUT and BARK Monitoring Tips

SafeUT alerts - After hours, holidays, and weekends
SafeUT may still send text and email alerts after hours or during blackout periods when they are deemed urgent. Most tips and alerts are deemed as non-urgent and are batched for 7am the next school day.

When a text/email alert is received after school hours or on a weekend, it should be addressed as soon as reasonably possible. In some cases, SafeUT will call the District’s on-call contact, through Health and Wellness, to obtain information immediately. When SafeUT contacts the after-hours staff member it will be logged in the disposition notes in SafeUT for schools to address the next school day. SafeUT may still send urgent alerts to schools after hours or during blackout periods without contacting the on-call staff. These alerts are managed by the school.

BARK after-hours alerts
A BARK content monitoring alert that comes in after 3pm will not be forwarded to school staff until the next school day if it is non-urgent. Urgent notifications that come in after 3pm are sent to the Student Safety & Wellness Specialist, Angie Rasmussen for triage.

Documentation and closing SafeUT tips
It is essential to assign, document interventions, and close each SafeUT tip. This effectively communicates the status of the tip to all parties involved. Here are some helpful tools for this process:

All school administrators are set up in the SafeUt dashboard to receive alerts. If you are not getting SafeUT emails check your SPAM. There is an email filter in place to ensure that SafeUT alerts are not sent to SPAM. If you have checked your SPAM folder and are still not getting notifications, please email Angie Rasmussen.

Should you have any questions please reach out to Angie Rasmussen at angie.rasmussen@jordandistrict.org

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The date for the Jordan School District High School Graduation exercises is Thursday, June 1, 2023. Valley High School graduation exercises are scheduled for Wednesday, May 31, 2023. School graduation plans and times will vary from school to school.

Principals and Directors are encouraged to provide flexibility to parents or grandparents requesting the opportunity to attend the graduation ceremonies of family members.

Licensed employees are responsible for requesting a substitute through the Frontline Absence Management System, if applicable. In the blue “Notes to Administrator” box, the employee should add “graduation” along with his/her relationship to the graduate.

For additional assistance, please contact the Sub Office at 801-567-8219.

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Dear Principals,

As we have talked about reading classes and reading instruction, there has been interest from many schools in having teachers more fully trained in the Science of Reading, or LETRS training. 

Over the past month, Lexia (the company who provides the LETRS training) has released a new training geared specifically for students in grades 4-8, Lexia Aspire. (Lexia Aspire Website) There are several benefits to this training including:

  • The course is web based and self-directed
  • The suggested timeline is 29 weeks; however, it could be completed sooner depending on how fast the teacher works through the material
  • The cost for the training is $600 per teacher versus $800 + materials per teacher

The one drawback at this time is that we are unsure how Lexia Aspire will be integrated into the Secondary Literacy Interventionist Endorsement (the new Reading Endorsement). Together with other districts, we are working with USBE through this process; however, we won’t know the answer until later this year.

I have started the Lexia Aspire training, and it is something I wish I would have had as a Language Arts teacher. Not only does this program provide the foundational knowledge for why the Science of Reading is important; it also provides practical application that teachers can integrate into their instruction and classrooms now. 

Feel free to share this information with any Reading or Language Arts teachers who may be interested in the Lexia Aspire training. We’re hopeful that the training will be beneficial toward an endorsement but, at the very least, it is excellent reading instruction training. If you would like to consider paying for this training for your teachers, please contact me.  

Brandee Bergum
Secondary Language Arts Consultant
brandee.bergum@jordandistrict.org

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During the opening administrators conference in August, the Teaching and Learning administrators introduced the "Educator Contractual Responsibilities Yearly Checklist” as a tool to use with your teachers. This list of 20 responsibilities was generated from the essential functions and qualifications listed in the Jordan School District Licensed Job Description. To make this more meaningful as a growth tool for teachers and administrators, we are working on building scales for each responsibility that would help educators identify exactly what it means to successfully meet expectations.
I have included a link to a Google Form below. We would love to hear what administrators think each responsibility really means and what it looks like when educators successfully meet the intended expectation for each one. We know you are all busy, so we don’t expect you to provide feedback for each indicator. To help save you time, the responsibilities have been grouped into four categories, and we are asking that you click on at one category and just do as much as you can.
Please feel free to forward this email to your assistant principals. Since we are just gathering information at this point, we aren’t ready for coaches and teachers to start worrying about what this is and how it might be used, so we would appreciate it if you don’t forward this outside of you admin team.
We are grateful for any time you can give to this to help us develop a tool that helps all of us improve our practice in order to provide the best education for students and a working environment where every educator can thrive!
Thank you!!!

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March is here, which means St. Patrick's day, spring, and (hopefully) warmer temps. It is also Women's History Month, which began the week of March 8th, after President Jimmy Carter declared it Women's History Week. Then, in 1987 congress passed Public Law 100-9, designating March as “Women’s History Month.”

The full newsletter can be found at the link below. Stories include:

Culture Corner
St. Patrick's day is coming up. Remember that many of your ML students may not know the holiday or why they celebrate in class (if you plan on doing this). Teaching about the holiday, informing parents about your plans, and giving them some information about the day is incredibly helpful to those students and their families who have never celebrated.

Teaching Strategies Small Groups

  • Why? More time to talk encourages oral language growth (speaking & listening). It gives students a small, safe group to practice with Builds classroom community.
  • For Success - Teach students how to work in small groups. Assign roles so they know what to do. Give sentence stems for language support (bonus points for helping them practice saying those things out loud in the hallway). Guiding questions or printed out steps can help guide them.

Reflective Questions
At this point in the year, what have I learned about: my students’ lives, families, and past experiences? my colleagues? my school community? my local community? myself?

What more do I want to learn as we end 3rd quarter (March 24) and move into 4th?

ELLevation Tips and Tricks
You can use the Student List to make targeted instructional recommendations for students who meet specific criteria. To batch recommend Activities for multiple students at once from the Student List, found in the full newsletter below.

ELD Lead Celebration
Melanie Nixon is both the coach and ELD Lead at Mountain Point Elementary. She has established great relationships with both teachers and students. Not only does she know what is happening at her school, she knows students by name. She is a great resource for teachers who need language and culture support for MLs as she helps teachers with RtI, language strategies and data. Melanie is very organized and on top of things and the MLs at Mountain Point are lucky to have her as an advocate.

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We are moving closer to the launch date for the new Brightly/Asset Essential work order system which will be replacing Sprocket effective April 3rd, 2023, we ask that you continue to use Sprocket until that date.

Most of our custodians and administrative assistants have had the opportunity to attend a training for the new system.

Please notify those who were unable to attend any of the scheduled trainings of these additional opportunities.

3/14/2023   
Principal Meeting – time certain during breakout sessions

3/21/2023  
Make up Training Date – ASB Presentation Room    2-4 pm
Open to Custodian and Administrative Assistants

3/28/2023 
Make up Training Date – ASB Presentation Room    9-11 am
Open to Custodian and Administrative Assistants

We appreciate your support as we work toward a smooth transition. If you have any question please reach out to our Brightly Team:

Teresa Lyon  :  801-567-8876  :  teresa.lyon@jordandistrict.org
Judy Bird  :  801-567-8625  :  judy.bird@jordandistrict.org
Jeff Beesley  :  801-567-8876  :  jeffrey.beesley@jordandistrict.org