May 23, 2024 RCSD Leadership Blog

BUSINESS SERVICES

Movie Nights/Events On School Campuses
The district has been sent a reminder that in order to show any movies on campus outside of instructional hours, such as for movie nights or community events, copyright licensing will be required. Swank Movie Licensing has reached out to the District with an offer to provide that licensing to school sites on a yearly basis. Prices vary based on enrollment size of the school, (they gave the example of $504 for a school of 300 students), but the price allows unlimited access to over 40,000 movies from studios such as Disney, Dreamworks, Sony, 20th Century Studios and more for 1 year. Information on what the program offers can be found on Swank.com. Information on why licensing is needed can be found on the provided flier. If your PTC is interested in putting on a movie night or showing movies at any of the school events for the 24/25 school year, please share this information with them! Swank also offers a streaming service for all the movies in their library, which can be added on for an extra cost. Please contact Micaela Mercer (mmercer@rcsdk8.org) with any questions.

COMMUNICATIONS

Twitter Survey
In order to complete our social media audit and recommendations for the next school year, we want to be informed of any RCSD staff member utilizing Twitter to share news/information about their RCSD classroom/school site/department. If you use Twitter in your professional capacity, please email Jessica Hull at jhull@rcsdk8.org with your Twitter handle. Thank you!
Contact: Jessica Hull

New Communication Platform for 24-25 School Year
As the District recently received notice that our current home-to-school communication provider, SwiftK12, will discontinue services and support on June 30, 2024, and in line with creating more two-way communication opportunities in modern platforms, the District has approved a contract with ParentSquare, a widely utilized platform currently serving over 12,000 school districts nationwide. ParentSquare consolidates various communication functions into one streamlined platform, facilitating mass communications, while also providing access to school services such as forms and documents. Families can receive communications via text, email, app, and/or voice messages in their preferred language. Alongside the two-way communication platform, ParentSquare offers staff access to additional features, enhancing communication efficiency. These features include appointment sign-ups for conferences, volunteer sign-ups, calendar and event RSVPs, digital forms, newsletters, digital permission slips, and more.
We are on track to launch ParentSquare to all staff and families at the end of July.
Contact: Jessica Hull

EDUCATIONAL SERVICES

Middle School Report Card Reminder
A reminder that sites will be running and emailing out report cards. Teachers will run previews. Site clerical will run the final report card and email it out on May 30th.
Running report cards
A reminder to please run them by grade level, otherwise the file might be too big to email out. Teachers are expected to done with their grades on May 28th at 11:59pm. It is up to you if you want to run the report card on 5/29 (after 11am) or 5/30.
For Buljan, Chilton, and Cooley is is called -|Report Card (MS) - English|-
For Eich it is called -|EICH Report Card (IB) - English|-
Video how to run report cards
Emailing out report cards
Sites will now email out report cards, which need to be emailed on May 30th. In this Zendesk article is a sample message you can use. Please make sure to use the 3rd Trimester message. Sites can modify the message, it is just an example.
How to Email Report Cards
Here are the slides that teachers received.
Contact: Brandon Blom

Cycle PD Dates for 24/25
The Ed Services team is busy planning professional development for next school year! We will have more details about the entire PD plan at the start of next year, but we wanted to get you the dates for PD Cycles now.
Trimester PD Cycles (2024-2025)-Ed. Services
Contact: Kelly Yusim

i-Ready Window 3
i-Ready Window 3 is open until May 24th. As a reminder, window 3 is required for 2nd grade, but optional for 3rd-8th grade due to CAASPP testing. Please work with your State and District Assessment Leader to check completion for all 2nd grade students. Please let me know if you have any questions.
Contact: Kelly Yusim