As we approach the summer months, we want to share some important information about our summer work schedule. During this period, our workweek will shift to four 10-hour days. This schedule provides a great opportunity for extended weekends while maintaining productivity.
Please keep in mind that if you need to take time off, PTO must be used for any hours not worked. Working only five hours in a day will not be considered a full workday. If you need to adjust your schedule, please coordinate with your supervisor to ensure coverage and compliance with our policy.
We appreciate your dedication and commitment, and we hope this schedule allows you to enjoy a bit more flexibility during the summer months. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out.
I hope this message finds you well. As we work together to ensure the smooth operation and continued improvement of our school system, I would like to remind everyone of the importance of adhering to the proper leadership channels when corresponding on district matters.
Lines of Authority and Responsibility The lines of direct authority are those approved by the Board of Education and are reflected in our district organization charts. These lines represent not only a clear direction of authority and responsibility but also serve as important pathways for communication and collaboration within the district. By following these established structures, we ensure that all staff members are informed and that matters are addressed at the appropriate levels.
Referral of Matters When an issue or matter requires administrative action, personnel should refer it to the administrator to whom they are directly responsible. If needed, the matter can then be referred to the next higher administrator. It is essential that all personnel keep their immediate administrator informed of their activities, as transparency and communication help us maintain a cohesive and efficient district.
Complaint Resolution Process It is also important to note that School Board Policy G-18 outlines how we resolve complaints here in SLCSD. This ensures that all staff members have access to a fair process in case they wish to challenge a decision, while also respecting the established leadership channels. The district highly encourages individuals to try to resolve their concerns at the lowest level. To that end, the district suggests that the individual making a complaint discuss the relevant issues with the person about whom s/he is complaining if the complainant feels s/he cannot approach the person with whom s/he has a concern, s/he can fill out the G-18: Complaint Resolution Request Form and submit it to Respondent’s supervisor.
Two-Way Flow of Communication While the lines of authority represent direction, they also serve as avenues for the two-way flow of ideas and feedback. Collaboration and open communication are key to continuously improving the programs and operations of our school system. I encourage everyone to use these channels not only to report issues but also to share ideas and suggestions that can benefit our students and staff.
Thank you for your continued dedication to maintaining clear and respectful communication, and for your commitment to supporting the success of our students and schools. Together, we can ensure that our leadership processes function smoothly and that we work collaboratively toward our shared goals.
If you would like a refresher for which area director is responsible for which school, it can be found here.
We hope this message finds you in good spirits! We wanted to take a moment to share some important updates regarding the upcoming organizational changes within our district.
Effective 3/5/2025, the School Leadership & Performance Department and the Educational Equity & Student Services Department will officially merge to form the new School Leadership & Support Division. This strategic integration is aimed at strengthening our collective efforts to support schools more holistically, with a unified focus on leadership, performance, and equity.
By combining our strengths and expertise, we will be better equipped to:
Provide seamless and consistent support to schools, students, and families.
Prioritize equity and inclusivity in leadership decisions and student services.
Ensure that all students receive the resources and opportunities they need to succeed.
Streamline our processes for greater efficiency and effectiveness across the board.
We understand that change can present both opportunities and challenges, and we are committed to ensuring a smooth transition. In the coming weeks, you will receive more detailed information about structural changes, team roles, and next steps as we move forward. Our leadership team will also be available to address any questions or concerns you may have.
We are confident that this merger will enhance our ability to provide meaningful support to schools and students throughout the district. Your continued dedication and hard work are essential to this success, and we look forward to the exciting possibilities that lie ahead.
While this may not directly affect most of you, we wanted to keep you informed about this organizational change. Additionally, I’ve provided a summary of the changes from the district reorganization, which may be helpful should you need any assistance. Please note the following:
The School Leadership & Performance Department, Evaluation & Assessment and the Educational Equity and Student Services Department will merge to form the new School Leadership & Support Division.
The Student Services Director, Educational Equity & Access Director, SEL & Prevention Director (formerly titled Director of SEL and MTSS), and the Evaluation & Assessment Supervisor will now report to the Executive Director of School Leadership & Support (formerly titled Executive Director of School Leadership & Performance).
Thank you for your continued dedication to the success of our students and to the important work we do together. I look forward to our upcoming discussions and the exciting opportunities ahead for our new division.
Ramadan is a special time of spiritual reflection, fasting from dawn to sunset, and increased devotion for Muslims. As a school community, it’s important to foster a welcoming and inclusive atmosphere for Muslim staff and students during this period. Here are some helpful guidelines to ensure everyone feels supported:
Understand Ramadan and Its Practices
Fasting: Muslims refrain from eating, drinking (including water), and sometimes taking medications from dawn (Fajr) until sunset (Maghrib). The fast is typically broken with a meal called Iftar.
Prayer: In addition to the five daily prayers, many Muslims also participate in extra prayers called Taraweeh during the evening. This may lead to less sleep, so it’s important to be mindful of its potential impact on energy levels.
Eid al-Fitr: Ramadan concludes with the celebration of Eid al-Fitr, marked by prayers, family gatherings, and festivities. Muslim staff and students may request time off for this important holiday.
Foster a Flexible and Understanding Environment
Prayer Accommodations: Provide a quiet and private space for Muslim staff and students to pray during the day. Keep in mind that prayer times vary slightly based on the position of the sun.
Flexible Scheduling: Consider offering flexible schedules for fasting staff and students. Whenever possible, avoid scheduling exams, presentations, or physically demanding activities late in the day when energy levels may be lower.
Classroom Sensitivity: When planning classroom activities, such as parties or food-related events, be mindful of students who are fasting and create an environment where they feel comfortable.
Offer Alternatives for Physical Activities
PE Classes: For students who are fasting and may feel tired, allow them to opt-out of physically strenuous activities or participate in modified exercises.
Recess: Younger students who are fasting may prefer to engage in quieter activities during recess. Offer an indoor space where they can rest if needed.
Consider Lunch and Eating Spaces
Respectful Lunchtime Environment: For students who are fasting, offer a quiet space, such as a library or designated room, where they can spend lunchtime if they prefer to avoid the cafeteria.
Staff Breaks: For fasting staff members, ensure they have access to private spaces where they can rest or pray during lunch breaks.
Promote Inclusivity and Awareness
Community Education: Consider offering brief educational sessions or sharing resources about Ramadan to foster understanding and empathy within the school community.
Avoid Assumptions: Not all Muslims observe Ramadan in the same way. Some may not fast due to medical reasons or personal circumstances. Always respect individual choices and allow staff and students to participate as they see fit.
Accommodate for Eid al-Fitr
Time Off for Eid: Make sure Muslim staff and students can take time off to celebrate Eid al-Fitr. Encourage them to communicate their needs in advance to plan accordingly.
Schoolwide Acknowledgement: Consider recognizing Eid al-Fitr through announcements or newsletters, promoting inclusivity and respect for religious diversity within the school.
Communicate and Offer Support
Open Dialogue: Encourage Muslim staff and students to share any specific needs or accommodations they may require during Ramadan. Ensure that everyone feels comfortable discussing their needs with teachers and administrators.
Supportive Tone: Lead with a positive and welcoming tone, making it clear that the school is committed to fostering an inclusive and respectful environment for all religious observances.
By following these steps, the school can create a respectful, supportive, and inclusive atmosphere during Ramadan, showing genuine care for religious diversity and the well-being of all members of the school community.
Happy March! We hope this month finds you well. Below you will find some helpful attendance information and resources.
Utah Attendance Success Stories/Celebrations
This month we want to highlight LEAs and schools who are working hard to promote positive attendance and reduce chronic absenteeism.
We want to highlight Murray School District for all of the hard work they are putting into improving attendance across the district. This month, they’re launching an exciting March Madness: Attendance initiative. Schools within the district are participating in a friendly competition using a bracket system, but rather than competing directly against each other’s average daily attendance (ADA), each school is challenging its own ADA data from last year. The competition is based on the percentage change in attendance, with schools comparing their improvement to others in the district. Here is a video that they had students make to help with the initiative. Murray School District is also implementing other innovative strategies at every level to increase attendance awareness and remove barriers for students. Way to go Murray!
We want to highlight Copperview Elementary School in the Canyons School District. They introduced Attendance Mentors during Parent/Teacher Conferences. Staff members were assigned to families of students identified as “at risk” due to attendance concerns and academic struggles. These mentors met with families before or after their conferences to develop Attendance Problem Solving Plans, setting attendance and academic goals. A follow-up meeting is scheduled in five weeks to assess progress, with incentives provided for students and families who meet their goals. Thanks for such a great example for other schools to follow!
Attendance Webinar
Our next Attendance Webinar Series #2 will be March 11, 2025 at 10:30am. We are looking forward to hearing from Ogden School District who is highly engaged in attendance work. We will also be talking about attendance messaging and attendance calendaring. Here is a flyer with more information. Please forward this information to other contacts.
Cohorts
We are looking forward to starting our Engagement and Attendance Cohorts for the 2025-2026 school year. Engagement and Attendance Cohorts are year long, collaborative learning opportunities for LEAs, charters, and/or individual schools. Starting in May, this cohort will take part in 6 trainings led by USBE attendance specialists. These trainings will also be collaborative sessions to help develop, build, and implement an attendance system that works for your specific LEA/charter/school. Please contact one of the attendance specialists if your team would like to join this opportunity.
I hope this message finds you well. I wanted to take a moment to highlight our district’s strong commitment to afterschool programming, which is pivotal in supporting the academic, social, and emotional development of our students.
Afterschool programs offer students the chance to explore interests outside the classroom, engage in enrichment activities, and receive academic support in a safe, structured environment. These programs are vital in creating a sense of belonging, improving academic outcomes, and developing life skills that benefit students well beyond the school day.
In our district, school administrators play a key role in supervising afterschool programs. Their involvement helps create a secure and nurturing environment for students, strengthening their connections with staff outside of regular school hours. This approach elevates the quality of our afterschool programs and promotes stronger collaboration between classroom learning and extended opportunities for growth.
At the Salt Lake City School District, we are fully committed to ensuring our afterschool programs:
Remain accessible to all students, regardless of background or circumstances.
Have ample space across all sites.
Offer a variety of activities that meet the diverse interests and needs of our students.
Provide academic support and enrichment that aligns with our instructional goals.
Inspire student engagement, creativity, and personal growth.
We encourage all staff to actively support and promote these programs, whether through direct involvement, communicating with families, or helping students access these valuable opportunities. Your contributions are critical in ensuring the ongoing success and positive impact of afterschool programming throughout our district.
Please feel free to reach out if you have any questions or suggestions on how we can further enhance our afterschool initiatives.
Thank you for your continued dedication to our students and for helping ensure the success of the Salt Lake City School District.
Happy February! We hope the start of 2025 is going well so far for all of you. Thank you for working with us to help promote positive attendance and improve chronic absenteeism throughout Utah. Here are some important attendance items for this month we hope you will read and also share with other attendance contacts in your LEA.
USBE Attendance Support Specialists
This month we wanted to highlight the Attendance Support Specialists available at USBE. We have two attendance support specialists and we are here to support LEAs across the state with anything attendance related.
Garrett Russell- Garrett came to USBE after previously working as the district Attendance Specialist with Ogden School District. Before that Garrett worked at Greenwood Charter School and Voyage Academy as well as in Oregon and Colorado. He is passionate about improving attendance in Utah as well as overseeing Utah’s Prevention Check and Connect program. His email is garrett.russell@schools.utah.gov.
Megan Menlove- Megan comes to USBE from Alpine School District where she spent the last 13 years as a school administrator at the elementary, junior high, and high school levels. Prior to administration she was an elementary school teacher. She has only been with USBE since August, but is excited to support LEAs with attendance. You can reach her by email at megan.menlove@schools.utah.gov.
Attendance Incentive Ideas
It is important to spend time focusing on the positive things that are happening within your LEA with attendance. Here are just a few ideas of ways you can focus on the positive and create incentives that work for your specific LEA.
March Madness: Attendance Edition
Monthly Improved Attendance Parties
Attendance Recognition in Assemblies
Individual Student Recognition
Class Attendance Incentives
Letters/Emails/Phone Calls Home to Parents with Improved/Excellent Attendance Focus
We appreciate all of your support and engagement with our first attendance webinar of the series for 2025. If you were not able to attend but wish to go back and watch, here is the link to our USBE Attendance YouTube Channel. We will be posting our webinar series and other content here. Our next webinar will be March 11, 2025 at 10:30am. More information will be coming!
Request for Feedback- Statewide Attendance Campaign
We are looking for some input as we are preparing to launch a Statewide Attendance Campaign for the 2025-2026 school year. Please fill out this google form to give your input on the slogan and to join the planning committee. We are excited to see what we can come up with together!
Cohorts
We are looking forward to starting our Engagement and Attendance Cohorts for the 2025-2026 school year. Engagement and Attendance Cohorts are year long, collaborative learning opportunities for LEAs, charters, and/or individual schools. Starting in May, this cohort will take part in 6 trainings led by USBE attendance specialists. These trainings will also be collaborative sessions to help develop, build, and implement an attendance system that works for your specific LEA/charter/school. Please contact one of the attendance specialists if your team would like to join this opportunity.
We have enjoyed observing the progress you are making in your schools around PLCs. Many of you are establishing mission and vision statements, focusing on priority standards, or developing PLC leadership teams. We feel the conversations around the Learning by Doing readings have been productive and informative, and we have seen regular referrals to our district's tight PLC expectations.
As we are midway through the school year, our area director PLC would like to examine, calibrate, and discuss evidence of PLC implementation at all of our schools. Here is the assignment:
We've created a PLC Implementation folder embedded in your SIP folder (to reduce the number of folders). The link is below. Please upload the following artifacts to this folder:
One artifact from a PLC that is high functioning (you determine what high functioning means).
One artifact from a PLC that is on track at a basic but sufficient level (per our district's PLC phase timeline).
One artifact from a PLC that is struggling with an explanation (comment on doc or even separate Word doc) of how you are supporting this group and/or holding them accountable.
Artifacts may include agendas, minutes, placemats, common formative assessments, etc.
Please upload all three documents to your PLC Implementation folder by 5pm on February 12, 2025. Thank you! We look forward to seeing samples of your teachers' work.
Please put PLC artifacts in the "PLC Implementation" folder:
As part of our ongoing dedication to ensuring the safety and well-being of our students and school communities, we are reaching out to gauge interest from teachers and administrators in serving as School Guardians. This role directly supports the implementation of the HB 84 Utah School Safety Act, a key initiative aimed at enhancing safety protocols across our schools.
We are seeking committed volunteers to join this important effort. Your involvement would play a crucial role in fostering a secure and supportive environment for all. If you are interested in volunteering, we kindly ask you to complete the survey linked below.
Safety Survey Link
https://forms.office.com/r/QSRakuEzbx
Thank you for your continued dedication to the safety and success of our students.
Welcome back to school and to a fresh new year in 2025. We hope you all enjoyed your winter break and are looking forward to the second half of the school year. We are excited to share with you this month’s attendance focused email to LEAs across Utah to hopefully increase awareness of the resources available to LEAs from the Utah State Board of Education and also to share helpful information for you to distribute to other attendance leads in your LEA.
Celebration/Success Stories Ideas
It is essential in our attendance work that we focus on the positive and celebrate successes we are having at the LEA level and at the school level. Here are some ideas from LEAs in our state who are focusing on attendance.
One of the action steps Ogden School District is focusing on is using data to identify groups of students who they are able to impact related to attendance. Specific schools are piloting a "Moveable Middle" meeting where collaborative teams meet to review attendance data every 4-6 weeks. Parents/guardians are sent specific messaging based on data criteria sharing the impact of attendance and progress being made with the student's specific rate of attendance. At one of their schools, the team has identified a 10% improvement in the target students based on mid-term and term attendance rates. This is not only with the group identified in the "Moveable Middle" meetings but also in other subgroups. As a district, they will continue to refine their data analysis process to move to a district-wide implementation. Way to be an example of using data to drive attendance decisions!
Early Light Academy has created a focus on attendance messaging in their schoolwide monthly newsletter. They are holding attendance meetings with chronically absent students, families, and staff. As well as focusing on Tier 1 incentives for students and classes with greater than 95% attendance. We are grateful for their example of focusing on the positive and making sure to be consistent with attendance messaging!
Attendance Webinar
We hope you will join us on January 14, 2025 at 10:30am for our first attendance webinar for 2025. We are looking forward to sharing with you what resources USBE has to offer in regard to attendance. We will also hear from Murray School District who has worked really hard to improve attendance across their LEA and has shown a lot of progress. They will give a lot of practical information for all schools. We hope you will let all of your schools know about this opportunity to learn more about attendance in Utah! The flier can be found here if you would like more information.
Winter Messaging Ideas
Here are some helpful resources from Attendance Works on sending out messages during the winter months.
Here are some ideas on how you can engage with families to have discussions around attendance: home visits, special events, in-person family conferences, virtual family conferences, regular phone calls home, robocalls, automated text messages, manual text messages, letters home, attendance focused family night, digital newsletters, emails, engagement during pick-up and drop-off, dedicated communication app, etc.
Murray School District has been analyzing their attendance data and the correlation between attendance and transportation. They are wondering if any other LEA in Utah has noticed any of the following:
*Gaps in busing distance dependent on measuring point (example: 1.9 miles to the school from the leasing office, but the student actually lives farther away)
*Unsafe busing routes due to crime/unsafe neighborhoods
*Other busing/transportation barriers and gaps
If you have any questions or information you would like to share with Murray, please reach out to Brittany Roller at broller@murrayschools.org
Upcoming Dates/Information
January-March 2025- The Utah Legislative Session will start on January 21st and run through March 21st. Watch for updates on legislation surrounding education.
February 4 & 12 2025- Engagement and Attendance Cohorts Collaboration Meetings
*If your LEA is interested in joining an attendance cohort starting next school year, please contact us and we can give you more information.
We appreciate all you do. Please let us know how we can best support you and your schools.
