POLICY NEWS – for Staff Review

No new policy or procedure updates were approved or reviewed by the Board.

The Consent Agenda holds a lot of items that appear regularly on the agenda, such as Payroll and the Human Resources Report. At this meeting, the Board approved the final 2021/2022 Salary Schedules for the many exempt or non-represented staff.

The Board heard from our new Bremerton High School Athletic Director Amber Plummer and had the opportunity to recognize, and hear from, many student-athletes who also attended the meeting via Zoom. There was a lot of positive energy from these students involved in fall sports, including Football, Volleyball, Girls Swim, Boys Tennis, Girls Soccer, Drill, Cheer, and Cross Country.

West Sound Technical Skills Center Director Shani Watkins provided a report outlining the courses being offered, or planned, at the Skills Center, along with information on student demographics and other data. She also announced that under the 2021-23 Capital Budget, if adopted, the Center would be allocated $30 million this year to begin the Improvement Project for modernization and expansion.

Other than the Consent Agenda, the only “Action” item for this evening was the new Working Agreement with the Association of Bremerton Administrators (ABA) covering school years, 2021-22 and 2022-23.

The Bremerton School District Board of Directors expressed their gratitude to the voters of our district who have continued to show support even in these difficult and challenging times. The value of athletics in schools is significant. Athletics is often a building block of promoting school pride. Having a modern sports complex will provide a clean, safer environment for our P.E. classes and our sports teams, serving our schools and community for a long time. We’re sure it will be a source of pride for our community.

To view any of these documents, you may also visit https://go.boarddocs.com/wa/wabrsd/Board.nsf/Public#.

There has been some confusion in the District and around the state about the dates for Classified School Employees Week. As you may have noticed our District recognition calendar (updated and approved last June) lists Classified School Employees Week as the week of March 7. However, we have learned that the Public School Employees of Washington is recognizing it during the week of March 14.

We will be recognizing it as the week of March 14 for our Board resolution (to be presented/approved this Thurs) so we are consistent with the governor's proclamation. However, several of our principals have already made plans to celebrate their classified staff next week and it would be very difficult for them to change their plans at this time. So there will be some appreciation activities happening next week as well.

Moving forward, we will honor our classified staff during second full week of March.

The Bremerton High School NJROTC class had a surprise visitor last week! BHS graduate Jonathan Cissell (class of 2016) recently returned to JBLM from deployment in Poland. He recently surprised his his sister, BHS sophomore Rebecca Cissell, during the NJROTC class at at BHS.

Welcome home, Jonathan! Thank you for your service!

The Kindness Project consists of a group of volunteers who write encouraging notes to students, families and staff who are in need of a bit of extra kindness. More more information.

Got a shout-out for someone in your school or in the community doing great things to support our students? Please email Karen.Bevers@BremertonSchools.org!

2022-23 Academic Calendars (English and Spanish) are posted on the District website at www.BremertonSchools.org/Calendar.

The Bremerton School District, in an effort to increase the number of certificated substitutes, recently enacted the following incentives for the remainder of the 2021-22 school year. This information is available on our website at www.BremertonSchools.org/GuestTeachers. If you have any questions, please reach out to Leesa Bowie: leesa.bowie@bremertonschool.org.

Please help us spread the word.

Learn more at www.BremertonSchools.org/Gaggle. Resources for staff wanting to refer students can be found in this shared folder.

Teachers: Please consider adding a Gaggle Teletherapy graphic to your Google Classroom and Google Site. Please link to www.BremertonSchools.org/Gaggle or https://www.bremertonschools.org/Page/8609.

We are pleased to offer free online tutoring through TutorMe for all Bremerton School District students in grades 3-12. Students can access TutorMe through Clever.

More information is available on the District's Family Technology Support website.

The clinic serves Bremerton School District students (preschool - 12th grade) and staff. Learn more at www.BremertonSchools.org/Clinic.

Look for this graphic and link on the homepage, or click on the "FOR STAFF" tab on any District or school web page which takes you to the staff quick links & resources page.

Applications are now being accepted for the “Ellison Education Grants”. Grants are intended for K-12 public school teachers in Washington State. The Ellison foundation has awarded 66 grants and $288,000 to Washington State teachers the past five years. The Ellison Foundation will award grants ranging from $1,000 to $10,000 in the spring of 2022 (for use during the 2022-2023 school year).

Applications must be submitted by March 26th, 2022.

To learn more about the “Ellison Education Grants” please visit:

http://ellison-foundation.org/ellison-education

Did you know the Healthy Eating Active Living (HEAL) Coalition (one of the five networks of Kitsap Strong) created a webpage with an interactive map of resources for transportation, health care, food banks, clothing, free wifi, and other services? Check it out (and share!)