Posted by Janet Vinson on 11/17/2023
Assistant Superintendent- Janet Vinson
New look for PD Committee - survey coming!
The district committee's responsibilities for professional development has changed a bit, and now instead of determining which PD “counts” as PD points, they will be responsible for determining some of the district offerings in PD for the 2024-2025 school year. There will still be some PD required, such as GCN and Science of Reading to name a few, but we aim to offer more of a variety next year, and base these on teacher requests. To make sure your voice is heard, please complete the survey from Ed Services that will be coming soon!
In addition to this change, the PD committee will also be setting the “teacher supply standard” for grade levels. With input from teachers in their buildings, they are creating a supply list that will be stocked by the warehouse for sites to order when needed. Keep in mind that this will be a standard, so it will not be an exhaustive list of everything teachers may individually need, but it will be a district standard that is guaranteed. Anything above and beyond may be requested through your site principal.
NWEA PILOT coming soon for Middle School!
Director of Secondary- Ashley Moore
Secondary teachers, paras, and staff, we are thankful for all you do to educate our students on a daily basis! Some examples include
- Teachers at SMS and SJHS are utilizing high-yield instructional strategies in their Tier 1 instruction to help all students engage in their learning.
- LA teachers recently traveled to Enid to learn about new opportunities.
- SHS ELA teachers supported students' completion of ICAP requirements through their English classes this semester.
- SHS now serves NCAA virtual students in a more direct, monitored way.
- ELA, Spanish, French, and EL teachers have survived the first semester of brand new curriculum!
Our Math teams at all secondary sites including parent/community representatives John Weaver and Mark Thomas, have already met once and will continue to meet as needed to develop the math rubric, and evaluate state approved curricula. The state-approved list should be released sometime in December.
Director of Elementary- Diane Fix
Elementary is off and running with Math Adoption for K-5. We have a representative from each site for each grade level on our adoption team! We also have Maureen Lawson and Gay Washington serving as our community representatives on our teams! We expect the state to release the approved curriculums for adoption soon! We will start our evaluations and plan to have a chosen curriculum by April!
The beginning of the year RSA numbers are in! As a district we had 61 less students qualifying for RSA services! This is great news! What we are doing district wide is working so keep up the great work!
Ed Tech/Tech- Bryan Bloomer
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Ed Tech and Technology want to help you be successful in your classroom. If you are having issues with students' curriculum accounts or students accessing particular educational/curriculum sites please use the following steps to get help.
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Submit an Edtech ticket. This can be done using the icon under the staff page of the website.
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When submitting the ticket please include the following information.
- First 3 letters of student's first name and first 3 letter of student's last name that is having the issue (or at least one student.)
- A screenshot when the student tries to access the site.
- URL trying to be accessed (if it shows in the screenshot that works).
- Timestamp of when the student tried to access the site.
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Let us help you! Ed Tech has a great resource that houses training on many of our commonly used digital resources within our district? Please use this link to check out all the resources available to you via the Instructional Technology course in Canvas.
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FERPA AWARENESS
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Did you know that FERPA also applies to student technology use and the information students share with 3rd party applications? Maintaining FERPA compliance is crucial and is leading to changes within Clever. These changes are the district's effort to protect teachers and students personally identifiable information.
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Volunteers and contracted employees that come into the school must also follow FERPA. Ed Services is working with HR to create systems for training and informing all volunteers of FERPA and the role they play in protecting student information.
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Additional SMART interactive panels coming soon to elementary sites!
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SPED, GT, and Reading/CALT spaces will soon be outfitted with SMART panels to bring them in line with existing elementary classroom technology. Our goal is to have these installed by the end of the year.
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Indigenous Peoples Education- Rusty Atkins
Nov. 2nd was our Fall Native College Night for 11th & 12th grade students.
Nov. 9th was our November Family Cultural Night (dinner and cultural events).
Nov. 13th-17th was Roc Your Moc’s Week-with the 15th being the day to wear your mocs., also that day is the Iowa Tribal College Fair in Perkins (8th-12th grades).
Multilingual Learner Department (EL)- Stephanie Coca
This month we will be celebrating together at our Friendship Dinner. This event is held at the Stillwater High School Student Center. It will be held on Thursday, November 16th at 5:30. This is a potluck event. SPS will provide turkey, mashed potatoes, and gravy. Please come share a meal with us and meet many of the 400 multilingual students and families in our district.!
SPS has an English teacher at every site to teach our multilingual students English and to support their learning in the content classroom. Teachers who need our assistance to support their students are welcome to reach out to the Multilingual Learner (ML) teacher at their School Site or contact Stephanie Coca. In addition to our Multilingual learner teachers, we have language interpreter teacher assistants that support students, family, teachers and staff in Spanish, Pashto and Dari. If you need an in-person interpreter for Spanish, Dari, or Pashto, please contact Stephanie Coca. Finally, don’t forget to use the language line if you need to call and speak to a parent that has limited English proficiency! Here is the link to use Language Line: Language Line Phone Service Thank you for all you do to mentor and instruct all of our students at SPS!
Director of Federal & OSU Programs- Elizabeth McBee
Thank you to all of our SPS teachers and staff who have opened their classrooms and spaces to student observers, interns, tutors, and student teachers this semester! As a district, we support around 120 students from OSU and other programs. If you had a student observer or student teacher in your classroom this semester, please be sure to complete the survey sent to your email. This survey helps the district collect tuition vouchers to support SPS employees in furthering their education.
We have wonderful opportunities to work with OSU and other universities to participate in different research studies. If you are leading any research studies, or know of any research studies that would benefit our students and staff please complete the Proposal for Research form.
One more HUGE thank you to everyone who participated in our District-Wide Title Committee this fall. They gave up their time to help ensure we are using our district’s federal funds to support our students and staff in order to keep us growing.
