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Who to Call if You May Need to Close Your School
Dear School Leaders,
As you are aware, unforeseen circumstances -- water main break, loss of power -- may force you to consider closing your school for the day. The following information outlines the communication procedures that school leaders should follow to evaluate if a school closure is necessary:
- Step 1: Call Trena Deane, the executive director of Facilities Management, to alert her to the situation in your building. She can be reached at 720-641-7691. Trena and the Facilities team will evaluate the situation and determine the appropriate response.
- Step 2: Inform your Instructional Superintendent and ask your Instructional Superintendent to inform your Assistant Superintendent.
- Step 3: If the Facilities team determines that late start or closure is necessary, please inform the Communications team to support with messages to families. A Communications team member can be reached at 720-448-3751.
- Step 4: Trena Deane will notify Transportation Services, the Department of Safety and Enterprise Management of an official close. Transportation Services will coordinate and determine student drop-off. All students must be met at a drop-off location by a family member. If you have questions or concerns, contact Nicole Portee, executive director of Transportation Services, at 303-909-0452.
- Step 5: Inform your staff to let them know of the late start or closure.
- Step 6: Inform before- and after-school program providers if the school closes.
Thank you for all that you do every day for our students and families.
Warm Regards,
Susana
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Reminder: Sign Up for Required Mandatory Reporting Webinar
All Principals
As we shared in a Special Edition Principal Weekly on Thursday, all principals, assistant principals, deans and HR partners are required to participate in a mandatory reporting webinar this week. Please click on the link above to see information about webinar times, register and access the webinars.
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All Principals
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Complete Next Steps for CMAS Score Reports
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Deadline: After Friday, Oct. 27
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All Principals
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Submit School-Based Summer 2018 Program Details
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Deadline: Thursday, Nov. 2
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All Principals
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Review the Updated Timeline & Process for Finalizing Your 2018-19 TLC Model
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Register for webinars before Nov. 2 or 9
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All Principals
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Encourage Parents to Enroll Students in Summer Academy
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All Principals
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Facilities' Work Request System will be Unavailable Nov. 1-10
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All Principals
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Invite Families to the Superintendent Parent Forum
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All Principals
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Refer Paraprofessionals to DPS and Earn a Referral Bonus
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All Principals
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Share DPS Science Fair Information with Science Teachers
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Elementary Principals
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Review Changes to Kindergarten TS Gold Administration
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Elementary Principals
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Review Early Literacy Specialist Look-fors
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All Principals
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Encourage Your Team to Register for DPS AVID Professional Learning Day
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Secondary Principals
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Access Secondary Language Arts Screencasts and Leader Resources
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 Action Required
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Send Undistributed CMAS Reports to Processing for Shredding
Please remember that any CMAS score reports that have not been sent to or shared with families should be sent back to the DPS Processing Center. After Friday, Oct. 27, return all undistributed reports to the Processing Center for shredding by sealing the box and clearly marking with "ATTN: PROCESSING CENTER/CMAS REPORTS FOR SHREDDING." The 2017 CMAS score reports are also available for download from PearsonAccessNext. If you have questions about shredding, contact Ray Brazil at 720-423-4260.
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Submit School-Based Summer 2018 Program Details
The Community Use department must identify every school-based program that is scheduled to occur during the summer of 2018. Please provide the details of any and all summer programs that will be held at your school by Nov. 2. This information is important for construction project managers whose building improvement construction projects may potentially displace a summer program, creating the need to find an alternative location.
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Review the Updated Timeline & Process for Finalizing Your 2018-19 TLC Model
Teacher Leadership and Collaboration (TLC) has documented your
feedback
and has shared a new
timeline and process
for you to provide information about -- and receive funding for -- your school's 2018-19 TLC model.
This new timeline and process:
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Aligns
with the work you're already doing around strategic planning and budgeting.
-
Is
simpler
and is completed using a customized TLC tool so your TLC model lives in one place, is easily updated and is accessible to your support partners.
You'll receive your school's customized TLC tool and supporting resources via email by Nov. 1. TLC will host webinars to orient you to the TLC tool at 4 p.m. Nov. 2 and 9. Click here to register. In the meantime, review the TLC Planning Guidelines and FAQs.
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Updates and FYI
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Encourage Parents to Enroll Students in Summer Academy
As schools complete the READ Act assessment, encourage parents to enroll their children early in the Summer Academy program. Summer Academy is a free summer program for students whose assessment scores indicate they would benefit from extra practice and individualized attention. All kindergarten through eighth-grade students in ELA programs are invited to attend. All kindergarten through third-grade students who are on READ plans are required to attend. Formal invitations and registration documents will be available early November. For more information, review the DPS Summer Academy one-pager. If you have questions, contact Boris Guerra.
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Facilities' Work Request System will be Unavailable Nov. 1-10
To improve transparency, work request processes and asset management, Facilities is implementing a new work management system. As it switches over,
the system will be down Nov. 1-10. D
uring this window:
- Regular maintenance work requests cannot be entered in the system but will be captured by facility managers to submit when the new system is launched.
- Emergencies will continue to be addressed through First Call. If you have an emergency during this window, call 720-423-4020.
- Maintenance technicians will continue to work, but will focus primarily on backlog tickets, emergencies and urgent work. Any non-urgent new requests will be delayed.
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Invite Families to the Superintendent Parent Forum
Invite families to attend the Nov. 1 Superintendent Parent Forum. Parents will have the opportunity to engage in a conversation with Superintendent Tom Boasberg and school leaders about the work being done to support families as their child's first teacher and advocate. We will also discuss resources, strategies and tools for effective academic support and advocacy. The forum will be from 9:30-11:30 a.m. Nov. 1 at the Crowne Plaza Airport Hotel, 15500 E. 40th Ave. Food, childcare and interpretation will be provided at no cost. To register online, visit FACE.dpsk12.org. If you have questions, contact FACE_Events@dpsk12.org.
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Refer Paraprofessionals to DPS and Earn a Referral Bonus
DPS currently has a high need for Early Childhood Education (ECE), English Language Acquisition (ELA) and Special Education (SPED) paraprofessionals. To help our schools in need, DPS has launched an employee referral bonus program. Any current DPS employee can earn a $125 referral bonus for each new referral who applies and is hired into a school-based part-time or full-time ELA, ECE or SPED para role before Jan. 31. In order to receive this bonus, the referral must be hired before Jan. 31 and remain in their position for at least one full month. The employee who referred the new hire must also be active with DPS at the time of payout in March. For information about referring qualified applicants and more, click here.
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Share DPS Science Fair Information with Science Teachers
The 2018 DPS Science Fair will be held Jan. 13 at the University of Denver campus in the Gates Field House. School leaders can access guidelines, logistic information, a rubric for judging and materials in multiple languages for parents and families on the new Science Fair website. Please share this information with your science teachers. For more information, contact Renee Belisle.
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Review Changes to Kindergarten TS Gold Administration
Some Teaching Strategies (TS) Gold Kindergarten Reports now require 70% of items per area to be assessed in order to produce a valid area level score. To ensure teachers are collecting actionable instructional data and can reliably measure growth, a select number of dimensions have been added to each kindergarten area in order to meet the 70% threshold. Due to the added requirements, the TS Gold fall checkpoint deadline will be extended to Nov. 3. For additional information about this decision, click here. To review the full list of requirements, click here. All items are now available in the TS Gold kindergarten platform. If you have questions, contact Mackenzie Lane.
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Review Early Literacy Specialist Look-Fors
Elementary school leaders who are seeking to understand best practices of the Early Literacy Specialist (ELS) role can use this ELS Best Practices Look-for document. In this resource, you will find the core roles and responsibilities of an ELS, as well as ways school leaders can leverage their ELS to improve school-wide early literacy outcomes. If you have questions, contact Nicole Hensel.
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Professional Learning and Resources
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Encourage Your Team to Register for DPS AVID Professional Learning Day
The Office of College and Career Readiness is offering school leaders a full day to participate in College Readiness modules through the AVID program. The event is free and open to all DPS educators and school leaders from non-AVID schools and AVID schools interested in learning great college readiness strategies using AVID's K-12 College Readiness systems. DPS AVID Professional Learning Day is from 8 a.m.-2 p.m. Nov. 10 at the University of Colorado at Denver, 1201 Larimer St., North classroom building room 3202. Click here to register -- registration ends at 3:30 p.m. Nov. 6 and space is limited. To see the full agenda and module offerings, review the attached flier. If you have questions, contact Gary Cooper.
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Access Secondary Language Arts Screencasts and Leader Resources
You can now access school leader screencasts for middle school and high school language arts. These screencasts provide an overview of October teacher professional development and related classroom look-fors as well as preview of Module/Unit 2 anchor texts and unit assessments. Accompanying the screencasts are middle school leader look-fors and high school leader look-fors. These documents provide session key points and suggested look-fors in planning and in classrooms, as well as connections to the School Leadership Framework, LEAP and potential Instructional Leadership Team considerations. If you have questions about middle school, contact Stephanie Yemm. If you have questions about high school, contact Patrick Cavanagh.
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