8.4.26 Otter News

Please plan to post a welcome message to your students' families sometime within the first couple days of school. A template is ready to go in ParentSquare if you'd like to use it! It is called Teacher Welcome Message. Be sure it edit it with your name and details. Feel free to reword it, add, or post something different. Teachers will be able to post starting Wednesday morning, but not prior to that.

Teachers, please sign up to walk your classes through the various areas around the school for interactive modeling here.

Here are the lesson plans. You can modify as you see fit.

We no longer have to put daily counts on the board!

We are nearing the end of the summer work! This is the process that will be followed as the work wraps up:

At the August 5th staff meeting, teachers will fill out a spreadsheet with suggested donations, and Joe will post this all at once in ParentSquare! Please hold off on including your donations lists in welcome communications to families until Joe has reviewed and approved it.

One priority this year for our school is cultivating and maintaining positive, trusting relationships between staff, families, students, and community partners. As part of this, staff are encouraged to get to know each other.

ALL staff - please go to this slide deck and complete ONE slide introducing yourself. There is a template at the end of the deck if you want to use iit, or use your own layout. Feel free to share as much or as little info about yourself as you'd like! I left slides for everyone who completed one for last year. You can either make a new one and delete your old slide, or revise the slide you already made! Please complete by Friday, August 7th.

Most PDs and other meetings are on the Google Staff Calendar (please let Joe know if you don't see it when you go to calendar.google.com and know how to enable it). However, these are the most important upcoming meetings:

The current classroom map is here. It will be updated when changes are made.

This year, our budget is much smaller than normal, but we will strive our best to ensure everyone gets what they need. As in the past, I do not want people to spend a lot of their own money on supplies unless they are things you intended to keep if and when you leave the district.

Everyone will get the basics (paper, pencils, markers, crayons, etc.), and those do not count toward your budget at the start of the year. Araceli will let teachers know when they are ready.

Every teacher has a $250 budget for essential supplies. I don't need to approve anything under $250. The sooner you put in your orders, the faster they will arrive! We will need to cap expenses at $200 unless a need is clearly demonstrated to exceed that.

All teachers will be asked to create a suggested donations list at the July 31st PD, which will go out to families the following week. Also, we will be doing more fundraisers. However, the easiest way to raise money is to increase independent study completions and increase Saturday Academy attendance. Last year we did a great job with those things! Let's keep it up!

This year, ALL orders will need to be submitted using this Google Form. This will ensure all orders are tracked and we can monitor budgets closely. This video shows how the form works. Please watch it before placing any orders.

Every year, Keenan trainings are required of all employees as a condition of employment. Please ensure you login at https://mpusd-keenan.safeschools.com/ (your login is your email) and complete them by the due dates listed (most are due by September 30th). Some of these are required every year, so even if you already completed them last year, you have to do them again (sorry, that's state law!).

All teachers will be able to work on these between 9:45-12:00 after the kick-off at Seaside High on August 3rd!

Preliminary class rosters are here. If any changes are required, please let me know before Friday, July 31st. Not all confirmed non-returning students have been deleted from the spreadsheet, however there may be some students dropped over next couple weeks. If we need to rebalance classes due to dropped students, I will share my thinking with the teams involved so you can review and approve.

Please do not reach out to families or let them know if their child is in your classrooms until 4:30 p.m. on August 4th. All teachers should plan to post a welcome message in ParentSquare at 7:45 a.m. August 5th (you won't be able to do it prior to that, due to district-wide ParentSquare settings). Info about a template can be found here (note, the template in ParentSquare is slightly different than the one in the video), or you can use your own! Note: TK/kinder teachers won't use that template.

The draft schedule is here. The updated tabs are GREEN.

As updates are made, staff will be notified.

Please give us feedback!

In order to ensure students experience a more cohesive recess experience, this year we have a few shifts we'd like to implement:

Chanelle and I would love to come visit each classroom this year during the first week to introduce ourselves and set some school-wide expectations in a kind and clear manner. Alternatively we can do a read aloud as a means of building rapport with the class and discuss expectations. Please sign up here.

To enhance and enrich their educational experiences, I hope that all students will attend at least 2 field trips during the school year. To support this, each teacher has a budget of $250, which covers the cost of buses to most local destinations.

However, we will need at least 1 month to process purchase orders, OR advance notice if reimbursement is required (receipts or invoices are required for reimbursements). If a field trip appears cost prohibitive, just email me and we'll see what we can do!

Plan to work with your grade level team (or other colleagues) to plan field trip experiences for your students; you will be asked to provide that information to me later in August.

I highly recommend all primary grades TK-2 plan for a field trip to the Monterey Bay Aquarium (check out this page in a month so you can sign up soon - spots fill up).

The MBTA contract requires a team to meet within the first couple weeks of school to determine which adjunct duties will be in place. We will complete this process at the July 31st teacher meeting, with all teachers weighing in.

If you have not yet taken the survey that was sent at the end of last year regarding duties, please complete it here.

Teachers will also sign up for before/after school duties. We will continue to minimize amount of duties teachers have to complete, based on availability of other staff for those duties.

You can put in work orders for anything that needs to be fixed in your classroom. Examples: clogged sink, heater broken, windows/doors broken, etc. Put the work orders in at workorders.mpusd.net. Technology-related work orders can be put in at helpdesk.mpusd.k12.ca.us.

Note: Please DO NOT SUBMIT work orders for anything related to the bond construction work. If you believe something was not done correctly or is incomplete or missing, please reach out to JOE with the details.