Welcome Back to School! Happy New Year!!

We will work as a team in 2018!!

Department Meetings This Tuesday

We will flip-flop the after school meetings required for January. This Tuesday, January 10th will be for Department Meetings and our January Faculty Meeting will be Tuesday, January 16th. All teachers should be present and accounted for at both meetings.

Update from Child Nutrition Services 

Effective January 8th for the remainder of the school year, students eligible for reduced price meals will no longer have to pay at breakfast. 

Letters to the families have gone home and the information is posted on our school's website. 

Student Use of the Internet 

Back in October, the Blog discussed the problem with students' inappropriate use of our Chromebooks as a result of their ability to login to other networks and non-FSUSD Gmail accounts. We now have a solution to turn off the ability for students to login to Chromebooks with non school accounts; this way they can not use tools to circumvent the firewall and view things they should not be seeing as well as dodge our ability to monitor where they are going on the internet. To be clear, it can still be used at home by other family members however, the student will have to be logged in which means we'll have records of all the sites they visit. We can't see their passwords or anything like that, just the web pages they viewed.

In addition we are going to try a new program called Securly to enforce content filtering even when the students are at home. One of the nice features it has is to print out reports of everywhere a student has gone. TSS can provide these reports if they are needed, but the first place to still look will be the Chromebook history tab in Chrome. Since they will only be able to login with their school account, everywhere they go will be on there.

When they try to go somewhere they are not supposed to go they will see the below blocked screen.

We've also got it hooked into our students email and it uses language processing to look for posts where students talk about self harm / bullying / profanity that will alert us so that TSS can forward those emails to the site administrators to investigate.

Please note that if / when students approach you about how their Chromebooks are behaving differently, you can tell them those changes are normal.

Title 1 Program Updates: A New Section for 7/8th Grade Students Struggling in Read 180: "System 44"

We have added a 2 period section to our Master Schedule. The ELA & SPED Departments have referred a number of students to participate in System 44. Tracy Williams will be teaching this class during 5th and 6th period. Unfortunately, due to Master Schedule constraints, we haven't figured out how to add 6th graders to this section yet.

Title 1 Program Update: Upcoming Math Professional Development Cancelled

UC Davis Mathematics Project: Grade 3 -6 workshop has been cancelled due to low registration numbers. Grade 6 Teachers, please let me know if you can attend the "Middle School Math" workshop on 3/22/18 instead. 

Title 1 Program Reminder: Professional Development on Academic Discourse with Jeff Zwiers

1/27   Saturday Professional Learning for ALL CERTIFICATED STAFF at Crystal and Grange... Time and place TBD   This PD is eligible for buy back or salary credit
1/29   Professional Learning for Content Specific Department Chairs
2/13   Coaching Walks with Dept Chairs at CMS
3/13   Coaching Walks with Dept Chairs at CMS
3/19   Coaching Walks with Grange/Crystal Admin and Ed Services
Department Chairs - you will need to put in for all day subs on 1/29, 2/13, and 3/13.

Human Resources Updates:

• Please welcome Kiana Thomas as the new Secretary to the Principal at Crystal Middle School. She comes to us with experience that includes work as an Elementary School Secretary in the Antioch USD, as a Courtroom Clerk Supervisor for Solano County Superior Court, and was once an Army Recruiter. Her email is kianat@fsusd.org. Welcome, Kiana!
• Due to changes in legislation, all current noon duty must apply with the district for their position. Please go to the district's Edjoin page and search for "Noon Duty" positions and apply. If you have any questions, or know of any candidates, please let admin know.
• We have an SRO! Lex Egbert, Suisun City Police Officer, is our new, permanent and full time School Resource Officer. He will be posted up in the main office and provided with a confidential space as needed. When his FSUSD email is up and running, we will let you know!
• We have filled a vacancy for RSP Aide. Ms. Grace Beatty will be assisting F105, E203, RSP Classes, E201, and F101 and students in need of additional support. Welcome Grace!