October 15 Student Investment Account Update

Having trouble viewing this email? View it as a Web page.

Oregon Department of Education logo buffer
SIA Banner

Reminders

SIA Reporting and Office Hours

We recognize that plates are very full, and many of you are currently balancing reporting and planning deadlines for various programs. We want to emphasize that the SIA team is here to support grantees in the completion of their SIA reporting dashboards for both the 2020-2021 and 2021-2022 school years. 

October 31st, 2021 marks the First Quarter Report deadline for the current school year 2021-2022 and November 30, 2021 marks the Period 3 and Annual Report deadline for those with a summer extension from last school year 2020-2021. However, like most of our processes, we will continue to work with you and treat these reports like student work. We encourage you to reach out to your District Grant Manager or SIAinfo@ode.state.or.us if you have additional needs or anticipate needing significantly more time beyond the deadlines.

The SIA team is also offering office hours to support grantees in completing their reporting dashboards. We have two remaining October office hours (below), and additional office hours will be held throughout November. November dates and registration links will be shared in our next SIA Biweekly Message. 

Customized Reporting Dashboard

On October 1st, a link to grantee’s customized reporting dashboards for the 2020-2021 school year was sent to each grantee’s points of contact. Typically, those points of contact are the superintendent, business manager, and an additional district or charter school employee. As a reminder, you are welcome to share that link with anyone in your district or charter school. It is a live link, meaning that anyone who has the link can edit the information in your dashboard, so you’ll want to carefully consider who you share it with, but if others in your district or charter school need access to the dashboard, you are welcome to share the link and they will have access. If you are a district sponsoring a charter, please make sure to forward the link to the appropriate charter contacts, if they are not one of your three points of contact. 


Frequently Asked Questions

Q: I’m completing my Q1 Progress Report. Do I need to add an “FTE Type” for each line item, including benefits?

A: You will only need to add the FTE Type for Activities with an associated FTE. If you’ve split out salary and benefits in your reporting, please only select the FTE Type on the salary line (object code 111). This will help ensure we do not double-count FTE in our statewide reporting.

Q: Why isn’t there a place on my reporting dashboard to record Q1 spending?

A: For SIA Q1 Progress Reports, you do not need to report any spending. Instead, you’ll report on 7/1/21-12/31/21 expenditures in your Q2 progress report. This shift was made due to grant agreements not being released and fully executed yet and grantees not yet being able to claim SIA funds on EGMS this year.

For Q1, grantees only need to do the following:

  • Review Strategies
  • Update budgets and activities to align with actual allocations
  • Identify FTE Type
  • Respond to the Journaling Progress questions

For more detail, please refer to the Quick Guide to Q1 Reporting.

Q: Are charter school allocations included in their sponsoring school district’s budget on the customized reporting dashboard?

A: No. The allocation amounts displayed on the bar chart in your customized reporting dashboard, only reflect the individual institution’s portion of the allocation. Each charter school applying with their sponsoring district will have their own customized reporting dashboard (linked in the Strategies, Activities, and Budget section of the district’s customized reporting dashboard), and the charter school’s portion of the allocation is reflected on the bar chart on their customized reporting dashboard.

The only exception to this is for charter schools who are fully administered by the district. This is reflected on the District-Charter Agreement, and the charter school funding is fully included in the activities of the school district.


Resources We’re Excited About

In our last SIA “Resources We’re Excited About” section, we shared strategies for harnessing student focal group coping mechanisms against racism in and outside of school to improve student mental health and academic engagement.  This time, we take a deeper look at school policy and practice to promote inclusive, positive school climates that communicate to focal students a sense of safety and belonging; increase students’ ability to manage challenges; and are responsive to students’ personal and socio-emotional needs.  Doing so mitigates emotional challenges like depression, anxiety, substance abuse and psychiatric problems.

We share a review of the body of research on school climate from which we highlight inclusivity related to race and marginalized identities.  When school policy and practice does not listen to and respond to the needs of the school community, the likelihood of replicating societal inequities inside schools increases significantly.  For example, studies demonstrate that disproportionate levels of disciplinary action occur toward students of color when compared with white students; increasing bullying and violence tends to victimize marginalized identities (race, culture, gender, sex, disability, socioeconomic) and demand conformity to dominant identity norms; and the existence of adult bias places significant barriers to authentic, responsive adult-student relationships.  When these inequitable practices remain unexamined, unchallenged and unchanged, focal students experience unsupportive schools and suffer significant mental health consequences. 

Engaging, Proactive, Responsive, Relational Practices that increase students’ sense of supportive and inclusive school climates promote emotional well-being while simultaneously increasing academic outcomes:

  • Engage the community in planning school climate improvement initiatives in order to develop programs that effectively address the diverse needs of your school community, prioritizing relational trust in the process
  • Promote positive intergroup interactions through upstander behavior that prepares all members of a school community to speak out against bully-victim and discriminatory behavior, particularly during the elementary grades when children tend to make prosocial, ethical judgments about peers
  • Build adult-student relational trust by implementing Universal Design for Learning (UDL) which demonstrates through content and process an educator’s authentic trust in students’ ability to understand and select how they best learn, individually and socially
  • Implement evidence-based, equity-focused SEL programs that increase student self and social awareness, self-management and relationship skills, and responsible decision making, while empowering students to value all identities and interrupt racism

Additional Resources

SIA lightbulb icon

Please send any questions or comments to SIAInfo@state.or.us

You’ve been automatically added to this listserv based on your role, but you can manage your subscription as needed. We encourage you to share this message with new staff in your school/district who may be interested in receiving these weekly updates.