December 6, 2019

Happy Friday! I hope everyone had an excellent week. Many of you saw that we had a surprise fire inspection on Wednesday. I am happy to report we did not have any major violations. However, we did have a few write ups for power strips being plugged into a power strip. Please make sure that your power strips are in the outlet and not another power strip. Also, we had a few extension cords. Please make sure we are not using extension cords. Finally, we had a few ceiling tiles out. If you need to move a ceiling tile, please make sure it is back in place. 

Good luck to the LCHS Dance team as they compete at state dance today. Also, good luck to those students putting on the Madrigal show tonight and tomorrow. 

Since we are starting to see more and more campaign materials for the 2020 Presidential race, I want to give you a few legal reminders. In your classroom, you must refrain from endorsing a candidate. Students should not know your party affiliation based on discussions in class. The next item is from the December Newsletter from S.A.I. - May political candidates, parties, or campaigns send emails to school employee email accounts? Yes, but as wisely shared in (IECDB AO 2009-10): “we note that while this situation you raise [sending emails to employee accounts] does not trigger a violation of a statute or rule under the Board’s jurisdiction, we do encourage campaigns to refrain from sending a political email message to addresses belonging to public officials and employees due to the potential for the message to be forwarded in violation of the law.” Please advise employees that they should immediately delete any political email they receive on their work account, so they do not unintentionally forward it to someone else, as that would constitute the use of government resources for a political purpose, which is prohibited under Iowa law. Iowa Code §68A.505.

Looking ahead, our next extra hour meeting is on December 18. The 2 hour early out in-service is on December 11. During advisory on December 9, we will give our first Star math assessment of the year. During our meeting on the 11, we will learn how to use the reports to identify students that have skill deficiencies and how we can help alleviate some of these deficiencies.  

Have a great weekend!
Mark

Assistant Principal's Happenings

Winter Sports/Activity Season has started!  I encourage all of you to attend Winter activities and support our students.   Activity Sponsors, please check on eligibility for students.  If you have any questions please come ask me.

Students who are on Attendance Contracts are up to 40 students. Please encourage students to finish the semester strong so they don't have to make up extra time to earn their credits.  Please make sure your attendance is correct as well.  I've had very high numbers of truants this week which actually should have been much lower because most were just late to class, not actually truant.  

Lastly, if you are doing anything exciting in classes, please let me know!  I've been able to stop in a few more classrooms than usual this past week and saw some really great learning happening like pop-up art projects, pinata creations, egg drops, and breakfast burritos!   

Notes from the Librarian

Christmas season is upon us, and often, we are scrambling to find the right gifts for coworkers, friends, and family. Books are always a great gift! If you need something for kids, grandkids, or nieces or nephews, consider The Reading Warehouse (no, I am not paid to advertise for them). They have bargain bins and many titles that are only $1. The variety of reading levels and reading interests is immense. Check it out! 

Success Center Update

Thank you to all of you for your patience and effort getting students logged into and taking the STAR reading assessment on Monday.  In spite of having more than 450 students all testing at the same time, we only had very minor technology issues.  Mostly, we saw kiddos trying to autofill the URL instead of typing it in (and ending up in another school's program which, of course, would not take their username or password.)  And, we had a few occasions where a student was kicked out of the program and had to log back in to restart with the monitor password.  Overall, students were able to test in the time given, and we have fewer than five who were absent and are still needing to test.

Renaissance has, unfortunately, chosen this week to upgrade the platform for our program.  You will see some minor changes to the login process; specifically, the address you use to login has changed, and passwords and usernames are now all lowercase letters.  I received notice on Thursday morning that the upgrade is complete, so Monday testing should go off without a hitch (as much as 500 people all using technology at the same time can be hitch-less.)  I realize that the timing of this upgrade is inconvenient, but it makes more sense to get students familiar with and do the PD on Wednesday with the new platform.  I had a student take the test on Thursday using the new site.  He did not have any issues, and the reports generated in the new system are much more detailed and offer greater insight into the performance of our students.  It will be interesting to see the data we can collect with the math assessment on Monday.  I think we'll be happy with the changes, but, like anything new, a little patience goes a long way.  We are all learning as we go!

The new address to access the site can be found here.  Your username and password will be the same, but both will be all lowercase letters.  The program will ask you to change your password the first time you log in, and your new password will be case-sensitive. STUDENTS WILL NOT NEED TO CHANGE THEIR PASSWORDS.  Other than their usernames now being all lowercase letters, their passwords are numbers and will be unaffected by the upgrade.  The plan is to build a link on the school webpage to speed up the login process.  More on that later.

I will put a list of updated student usernames and passwords in your mailbox later today.  Please let me know if you have any questions.  

Tracy's Technology Tidbits.

Google has recently released several updates.

• Before publishing changes to your new Google Sites, you can now compare the currently published site with the soon-to-be-published draft site in an annotated, side-by-side view. Click here to learn more.

New Google Sites has had some more updates recently.

• Add captions to images in an image carousel
• Set a transition speed for an image carousel
• Hide headings from a table of contents
• Choose between different styling options for buttons
• Click here to learn more.

Have a great weekend!!!

Upcoming Activities

Friday, December 6
4:00 pm Wrestling @ Hinton
6:30 pm Madrigal Dinner

Saturday, December 7
6:30 pm Madrigal Dinner

Monday, December 9

4:30 pm JV Wrestling @ MOC

Tuesday, December 10

4:00 pm JV Boy/Girl Basketball vs Council Bluffs AL

5:30 pm Varsity Girl Basketball vs. Council Bluffs AL

7:00 pm Varsity Boy Basketball vs. Council Bluffs AL

Thursday, December 12

3:30 pm Bowling vs. OABCIG

5:30 pm JV Girl Basketball @ Heelan

6:00 pm Freshmen Girl Basketball vs. MOC

7:00 pm Varsity Girl Basketball @ Heelan

7:15 pm Freshmen Boy Basketball vs. MOC

Friday, December 13

1:00 pm Bowling @ Council Bluffs

1:00 pm Wrestling @ Council Bluffs

4:00 pm Freshmen Basketball @ Heelan

5:30 pm JV Basketball @ Heelan

7:00 pm Varsity Basketball @ Heelan

Saturday, December 14

9:00 am Freshmen Girl Basketball @ Gehlen

10:00 am Wrestling @ Council Bluffs

10:00 am Girl Wrestling @ Oakland, IA

10:15 am Freshmen Boy Basketball @ Gehlen
11:00 am Robotics in Old MS Gym

1:00 pm JV Boy/Girl Basketball vs. Western Christian

2:30 pm Varsity Girl Basketball vs. Western Christian

4:00 pm Varsity Boy Basketball vs. Western Christian

Monday, December 16

3:30 pm Bowling vs. Sioux City East

5:00 pm Girl Wrestling @ SBL

7:30 pm HS Holiday Concert

Tuesday, December 17

4:00 pm JV Boy/Girl Basketball vs Council Bluffs TJ

5:30 pm Varsity Girl Basketball vs. Council Bluffs TJ

5:30 pm Wrestling @ Western Christian

7:00 pm Varsity Boy Basketball vs. Council Bluffs TJ

Thursday, December 19

4:00 pm Freshmen Girl Basketball @ Sioux City North

5:30 pm JV Girl Basketball @ Sioux City North

5:30 pm Wrestling @ Council Bluffs TJ

7:00 pm Varsity Girl Basketball @ Sioux City North

Friday, December 20

4:00 pm Freshmen Boy Basketball @ Sioux City North

5:30 pm JV Boy Basketball @ Sioux City North

7:00 pm Varsity Boy Basketball@ Sioux City North