| Hello, again!It’s good to be back! October is National Principals Month. Send your principal an e-card or post about them on social media to show how much you appreciate them! |
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| Family Newsletter |
| By Scott Thomas ● Oct 25, 2021
Smart Brevity™ count: 5 mins... 1337 words
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Hello, again!
It’s good to be back! October is National Principals Month. Send your principal an e-card or post about them on social media to show how much you appreciate them!
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1 Big Thing: Why your child just took another test
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This week, students are wrapping up assessments to measure how we’re teaching subjects such as math, reading, social studies and more.
Why it matters: These assessments — called short-cycle assessments — measure how well we’re teaching our curriculum and how well students are soaking in the knowledge.
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Short-cycle assessments are designed by Austin ISD to match our curriculum and they measure things that were taught during the grading period.
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Students in grades 3-8 will receive the test as well as anyone in a high school course that has an End-of-Course STAAR exam.
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Tests will be taken on a computer, which matches how STAAR will be administered this year as well.
Students also recently completed MAP Growth. While both are part of our plan to regularly measure student outcomes, they’re two different tests with two objectives.
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MAP Growth, as the name suggests, measures growth over time.
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Short-cycle assessments measure how well students learned the curriculum in Austin ISD.
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Teachers know which questions will be in the short-cycle assessment so they can make sure they're teaching the right areas of the curriculum.
Scott’s thought bubble: We realize this can seem like a lot of testing, but it’s important to get this data early coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic.
What next: Students will take the short-cycle assessments two more times this year, before the winter break and once more in the spring.
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2. Superintendent: Community collaboration key to mask success
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During this year’s State of the District address, Superintendent Stephanie Elizalde attributed Austin ISD’s successful implementation of a mask mandate to the community’s cooperation and support
Why it matters: Austin ISD continues to have the lowest rate of COVID-19 infections across school districts in Central Texas.
Driving the news: The comments came from this year’s State of the District, a wide-ranging conversation that covered COVID, student outcomes, enrollment, and her personal story.
Toward the end of the interview, Smith asked Elizalde what she thought she needed to do to be successful.
Dig deeper: Watch the full interview and read more on our website.
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3. Lend your voice to the Equity Assessment process
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We’re getting closer to starting the Equity Assessment process and we need some community feedback.
Why it matters: We need to know what to focus on in the Equity Assessment and there’s no one better to ask than our students, staff, families, and community.
Go Deeper: The survey is uploaded into BLEND so students in middle and high school can share their feedback.
Yes, but: The Equity Assessment and Equity Action Plan are not the same.
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4. A new federal grant will help us address mental health support
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The Austin ISD Police Department will hire its own Licensed Mental Health Professionals thanks to a $248,245 grant from the U.S. Department of Justice.
Why it matters: Mental health calls have increased districtwide year over year. In the past five years, our police department reported a 63% increase in mental health crisis calls.
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This school year alone, the police department has responded to at least 10 mental health calls per week.
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Having LMHPs within the police department will allow for quicker response times to mental health crisis calls.
Go deeper: Historically, our officers partner with Integral Care to provide LMHPs when responding to crisis calls.
What's next: The grant will fund two contracted, part-time LMHPs to join the police department to respond and assess high-risk crisis calls.
The big picture: This grant will add to the work happening around mental health in the police department. We have two mental health coordinators who provide mental health and crisis intervention training on a regular basis.
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5. Let’s Talk Question of the Week: We’re sticking with masks
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Families can ask us anything via Let’s Talk, our two-way question and answer platform. Each week, we highlight some of the questions we get that might help you.
Lots of you asked: Will the district continue mandating masks now that we're in Stage 3?
Answer: Yes, we’re sticking with our masks for now.
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We know masks work and we still have students who aren’t able to get vaccinated yet.
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Public health information guided my decision to mandate masks and I’ll look to that data before making any changes.
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We’ve also provided an incentive for staff to get vaccinated.
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We’ve been able to keep COVID cases low this year compared to our surrounding districts thanks to masking, vaccines, and thorough contact tracing. At our peak, we were under 0.25 percent of our total in-person students and staff.
Submit your own questions via Let’s Talk by going to www.austinisd.org/letstalk or texting 512-886-6434.
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6. COVID cases continue downward slide
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We’re going down…and that’s great!
Our total COVID cases are down 43% from this time last month.
Why it matters: We’re continuing to see our protocols working so we can stay focused on what’s happening in the classroom.
This week: We have 82 total COVID cases, which is about 0.1% of our students and staff.
What's next: Rapid testing is now available to anyone, regardless of symptoms.
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7. Extra credit: links for the week
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Austin Public Health has released a survey for families with children ages 5-11 to get a sense of demand for the vaccine. Take the survey today.
Capital Metro has partnered with local arts education nonprofit Creative Action for Art on the Bus, a contest that gives one local school the opportunity to showcase student art on one of Capital Metro’s electric buses. Learn about the contest on Creative Action’s website.
Families can give us feedback on our pre-K program via a survey we launched this week.
As part of Go Get it Week, we’ve been having college-themed activities all week, and our high school students went to a college fair earlier today.
Make sure to vote in the Hispanic Heritage Month talent show by Friday, Oct. 22 on the Educa Austin Facebook page.
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Get ready: next week we’ll share details on a Halloween Costume Contest, including a PRIZE.
See you next week!
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