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Closing Procedures for Fiscal Year 2021-2022
All public school units, the closing procedures for 2021-2022 have been posted under What’s New on the FBS website at Financial and Business Services | NC DPI.
If there are any questions, contact Roxane Bernard at roxane.bernard@dpi.nc.gov.
July 1st Deadline To Give Feedback on K-12 Science Standards
Please pass along to your Science teachers/teams for input on this important process!
As part of the North Carolina Standard Course of Study Standards Revision for both Healthful Living and Science, each PSU is being requested to complete PSU Standard-by-Standard Surveys. Each PSU should convene internal team(s) to submit feedback on the current K-12 Healthful Living and K-12 Science grade level/content area standards. The links below are not intended for release to the public. They are for PSUs to use when ready to submit your feedback. Individual teachers, administrators, parents, students and community members can still complete the All-Stakeholder surveys if they wish to provide additional individualized feedback.
NCDPI K-12 Science Standards PSU Standard-by-Standard Survey
https://ncdpi.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_3JlUqt2FZnbfbAG
NCDPI K-12 Health Education PSU Standard-by-Standard Survey
https://ncdpi.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_6RnHh3ob72DXo4S
NCDPI K-12 Physical Education PSU Standard-by-Standard Survey
https://ncdpi.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_54hnQVfPkpsuafI
The 90 day pause on ERP Go-Lives is lifted effective June 17, 2022. A new PSU ERP Pre-Go-Live Check List Version 1.0 is now available with sign-off by NCDPI School Business/Office of Systems Modernization required prior to any ERP system go-live.
Contact: Barry Pace at barry.pace@dpi.nc.gov.
Mental and Behavioral Health Survey
Deadline June 30th
In an effort to gather information about what additional supports schools may be interested in regarding mental and behavioral health, we are requesting responses on this survey. We are considering options that could be offered to schools and students, which may include the examples listed in the survey. This survey is for information-gathering purposes only and is not a guarantee that services will be available or offered. However, your participation in the survey will help us to better define schools' interests in the realm of mental and behavioral health, whether it is through our testing program or through other avenues.
Please fill out the following linked survey by Thursday, June 30th at 5PM to assist NCDHHS in refining the mental and behavioral health services that are considered.
Please note that this is NOT an opt-in form, but a survey to help NCDHHS understand where the most interest lies in mental and behavioral health supports in schools. If any mental and behavioral health programs and supports are offered by NCDHHS for the upcoming school year, documents detailing these options and opt-in requirements would be distributed at a later date.
Please email our team at K12COVIDTesting@dhhs.nc.gov with any questions.
Best,
Your StrongSchoolsNC Team
PowerSchool End of Year (EOY) - IMPORTANT
All PSUs will execute the EOY Process. EOY processing within PowerSchool is expected to begin by 5:00 p.m., June 29th. A 24/7 EOY Contact and a backup contact are required from every PSU, and these contacts must be accessible from June 29th until notified that NCDPI has completed EOY processing.
Powerschool EOY User Guide: PSU Contact Responsibilities
If you have received notification of errors in your data please work to have those corrected by end-of-day TODAY, so that your school does not hold up this massive statewide process. Thank you!
New NCEES Information and Resources Site
The North Carolina Educator Evaluation System has a new public site, https://bit.ly/ncees-resources.
This site houses NCEES information and resources to support all educator evaluations in North Carolina. If you cannot find the resource(s) you are searching for, please email: EducatorEffectiveness@dpi.nc.gov.
The NCEES Google Site will be discontinued on June 30, 2022. Please bookmark the new site, https://bit.ly/ncees-resources, and share this information with your NCEES system users.
Effective June 24th, NCDHHS will be sunsetting the NC StrongSchools Toolkit. Going forward, school administrators, staff, and families should refer to the CDC’s Operational Guidance for K12 Schools for information on how to lower the risk of COVID-19.
As we transition from the StrongSchools Toolkit to the CDC guidance, highlights of policies for schools include:
- It is no longer recommended that schools require staff to report their vaccination status and participate in a screening program, if they are unvaccinated
- Masks are recommended at high CDC COVID-19 community levels
- It is no longer recommended that schools implement physically distancing strategies (such as keeping students 3ft or 6ft apart)
- Universal contact tracing is not recommended
- Testing, Ventilation and Cleaning remain important layers of protection
- While the StrongSchools Toolkit will no longer be in effect, NCDHHS will continue to update and share supplemental materials to help school leaders plan for the upcoming school year.
These materials include:
These documents will provide additional information to help schools operationalization the recommended actions in the CDC Guidance. All resources are available on the NCDHHS Guidance Website.
School leaders are strongly encouraged to continue implementing a layered prevention strategy to reduce the risk of COVID in school settings. Promoting vaccination, implementing a testing strategy, ensuring students and staff know to stay home when they are sick, ventilation and hygiene all remain critical tools to slow the spread and lower the risk of COVID-19 in our communities. We want to recognize the school staff and officials who have worked tirelessly to keep your students and colleagues safe throughout the pandemic.
Reporting Discipline Data to the State
Per SBE policy (SSCH-000), incidents of certain behaviors and disciplinary actions must be submitted to the state within 5 business days of occurrence (see pages 4 - 6 on the North Carolina Discipline Data Reporting Procedures Manual). All discipline data must be submitted by June 29th this year when the window for reporting closes.
To meet this requirement, the data must reside in the state database where it can be viewed in state reports. For these offenses to be pushed into the state database and be viewed in state reports, you must not only enter the offenses in PowerSchool but also run the State Discipline report in PowerSchool. If you are using 3rd party software to enter your data, please verify with your vendor that your data is being submitted to PowerSchool in a timely manner. You should also verify that these data are accurate by running the state level reports periodically throughout the school year.
Also, please review the disciplinary data manual found on the NCDPI website and make sure your staff understands the definition of each of the reportable acts and consequences to ensure you are reporting them both correctly.
ALTERNATIVE LEARNING PROGRAMS & SCHOOLS (ALPS)
To help us maximize our support, we request your assistance in updating the ALPS District Data Coordinators Contact List and the ALPS Directory. To make it easy for you to provide your updates, we are utilizing Qualtrics Survey and Google Sheets (see links below). Once we receive your input, we will post the updated ALPS Directory on the NCDPI website.
Important MEMOs:
Summer Institute for Federal Program Directors-July 26-28, 2022
This year we are pleased to announce the institute is open to all directors. Three groups will be established. (Group 1-New Directors (less than 3 years), Group 2-Veteran Directors, Group 3-Charter/Lab School Leaders. Please register for this event at the link below.
Registration Link Must register by June 30, 2022 for final counts and planning to occur.
The Summer Institute will be held July 26-28th at the following location:
Randolph Community College
413 Industrial Park Avenue
Asheboro, NC
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EC ANNOUNCEMENTS |
ECATS End-of-Year (EOY) and Beginning-of-Year (BOY) Processes
EOY Process
The 2021-22 EOY Process for the Home Base suite of applications will begin Wednesday, June 29. Home Base will be taken offline on Wednesday at 5:00 p.m. EOY processing and archiving of data will start on Thursday morning, June 30. School year close-out files for ECATS will be pulled at PowerSchool EOY shutdown. This allows the ECATS Special Education Module and the MTSS EWS to have final data for the 2021-2022 school year including: final grades, incidents, and course information, etc. During the EOY process, ECATS will remain available for use. Please be aware that ECATS will remain available to users; however, data transfers between the systems will be turned off during this time. This means no new students will be added to ECATS, and no 2022-2023 PowerSchool data will be updated in ECATS until the EOY process is complete, EDDIE data has been imported into PowerSchool, and other data verifications have occurred.
BOY Process
Once EDDIE data has been consumed into PowerSchool and data verifications have occurred, ECATS will pull files for an initial load of data for the 2022-2023 school year. Once this process is complete, ECATS will resume its regular data file import schedule. ECATS pulls current-year information only on the schedule shown below.
Office of Charter Schools (OCS) Updates
2023 Burroughs Wellcome Fund NC Teacher of the Year Nomination Process
The Burroughs Wellcome Fund NC Teacher of the Year is recognized at the school, regional, and statewide levels. Individual public charter schools nominate a Teacher of the Year who participates in a selection process facilitated by the Office of Charter Schools at the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction. Once the charter school nomination processes are completed, the teacher finalists vie as one of the state’s nine Regional Teachers of the Year. [The state is divided into eight geographical regions and NC Charter Schools are clustered together to form the ninth region of the state. The Charter School Teacher of the Year joins the Regional Teachers of the Year team as a finalist for the state Teacher of the Year]. This selection process is facilitated in each region by Regional Education Facilitators. If you need additional information please reach out to your Regional Educator Facilitator or Dr. Sonja Brown at Sonja.Brown@dpi.nc.gov Please remember to nominate your school's Teacher of the Year.
 The NC ACCESS Program is offering two amazing (and FREE) development opportunities for charter school leaders and teachers during the 2022-23 school year. Visit ncaccessprogram.com/learn for more information.
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Science of Reading (LETRS) Training for 200 teachers and 100 administrators. NC ACCESS is partnering with Lexia Learning to provide the same LETRS training that the state is offering to traditional public schools.
- The ACCESS Fellowship for 100 charter school leaders. To-date, this intensive development institute has only been available to NC ACCESS subgrantees. This year, it is open to all. Apply today!
NC ACCESS Aspiring Minority School Leaders Program
Are you looking for School Leaders?
The North Carolina Advancing Charter Collaboration and Excellence for Student Success (NC ACCESS) grant program in the Office of Charter Schools was excited to embark on the Aspiring Minority School Leaders Program in collaboration with Appalachian State University. The Aspiring Minority School Leaders Program was designed to recruit, support, and build a pipeline of minority school leaders prepared to meet the challenges of leading schools. North Carolina charter schools will benefit by having access to a cohort of school leaders of color and women who are exceptionally trained, ready to be part of innovative school reform initiatives, and ready to move into leadership positions with strengthened organizational and instructional leadership skills.
We are proud to announce that we have twelve completers from the program. All have a Master’s Degree and years of school-based experience. If you are actively looking to fill certified school leadership positions, please send your listing to Dr. Barbara O’Neal in the Office of Charter Schools at barbara.oneal@dpi.nc.gov. I will send your position notices to the program completers.
Note: This special effort to inform this group of twelve does not replace the normal process of sending open positions notices to the OCS Newsletter, please continue to send them your position notices. Questions, please feel free to contact me at the same email address.
Other Resources from DPI
Leadership Opportunities
Whom Should I Contact at the Office of Charter Schools?
OCS Main Number: (984) 236-2700 / Email: ocs@dpi.nc.gov
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