School is set to resume tomorrow in the West Ada School District. In-person will be Team 2: www.westada.org/AlternatingDaySchedules.

West Ada School District is committed to balancing in person learning, the safety of its students and teachers and Covid-19 protocols. Over the past few days, the focus has been specifically working with the West Ada Education Association find a solution that would ensure teachers feel safe and allow school to take place on Monday and Tuesday. Those efforts were not successful, but teachers have assured us that school will happen on Wednesday.

West Ada School District appreciates this first step and is dedicated to finding solutions for those who have concerns over in person learning on an alternate day schedule. Some of the things we are doing include visiting classrooms, that teachers have indicated do not allow then to socially distance their students, and address these on a case by case basis. The District has also worked with Dr. Pate (retired CEO of St. Luke’s Health System and a member of the state’s coronavirus task force) who has committed to holding a virtual meeting with teachers to answer questions concerning their safety this Thursday. Dr. Pate has also finished a draft of his evaluation of our pandemic plan and health and safety plan. He has reached out to other local doctors and will include their comments in a final draft that should be ready for the Board on Friday. He is willing to present his findings and recommendations to the Board next Tuesday, October 27.

West Ada School District believes these are important first steps to improve safety concerns. In, the coming days and weeks efforts will continue.

District Administration has been working with the West Ada Education Association to ensure that school can happen on Tuesday. Currently, we have 440 teachers who have called in sick for tomorrow. We are sadly unable to safely hold school tomorrow due to supervision concerns. This includes students enrolled in Virtual School House, and students who would have been learning remotely. We are continuing to work with the West Ada Education Association to find solutions to their concerns so we can hold school Wednesday. 

Free meals are available to students from 10:50 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. at many school locations. You must order before 7 a.m. using the form available on this webpage (https://www.westada.org/FreeMeals) to guarantee a meal is available for you. 

Sincerely,

West Ada School District

Hello,

School Nutrition Services will continue to provide free breakfast and lunch combo meals on Monday, October 19, for all West Ada Students.  Even though there is no school, meals will still be available.

 

Pick up times are 10:50am to 1:30pm.

Please visit https://www.westada.org/freemeals to pre-order your free meal for pick up.

Parents/guardians and older siblings can pick up meals for students that are not present.

We also invite all children ages 1-18 to visit one of our 4 open the community sites for free meals.

For more information on our community sites please visit our website at https://www.westada.org/freemeals.

 

Thank you

School Nutrition Services

Dear West Ada Family, 

The West Ada School District has considered the recommended guidance when it comes to youth sports, and we will continue to work with our schools, coaches and athletes to provide the safest environments possible for all participants. In working through processes to mitigate the spread of Covid-19, the West Ada School District has identified areas of concern within programs and has taken action where necessary, including shutting down programs.

We have learned through contact tracing that often times activities outside of school are contributing to the spread of the virus. Activities such as after game parties, sleep overs, ride sharing and team members sharing a meal together, even after practice has been canceled, are examples of how the virus is spreading. While we cannot control those activities, we can control and mitigate what happens within our programs and at school. We do this by having coaches educate our students. We also must have parents/guardians follow the safety protocols at practice and at games.

Going into winter sports, we are using the lessons learned from fall sports to continue to mitigate the spread of Covid-19. In football, soccer and cross country, we had nearly 2400 participants and confirmed less than 10 positive cases in those programs. We saw a higher positivity rate within the volleyball program (800 students participated) and took appropriate actions to quarantine players, teams and cancel practices and games as needed. We understand that athletics can be a source for the spread of Covid-19, but West Ada is not seeing that it is impacting community spread at this time.

As fall sports conclude, West Ada is looking forward to its student athletes being able to successfully participate within the district and at the state level. This will continue to look different and will only happen if we adjust to doing things differently. Strict guidelines must be followed by students, coaches and parents.

Dear Staff, Students and Parents/Guardians,

 

Earlier this month, West Ada School District’s COVID-19 taskforce surveyed staff, students and parents/guardians regarding their support of adjusting the pandemic plan bringing students into school daily in yellow or on alternate days in red. Results showed the three main demographics are split – parents and students are in support of all scenarios while staff are more cautious. 

 

Sixty-four percent or more of parents/guardians responding to the survey are in support of students returning to school daily in yellow or on alternate days in red. Fifty-one percent of parents/guardians invited to participate in the survey submitted responses. 

 

Those percentages decrease to 55 percent of students in support of the alternating days in red, though 59 to 73 percent of students support attending daily when in yellow. Twenty-nine percent of students invited to participate in the survey submitted responses. 

 

School building staff who responded to the survey are not in support of any of the scenarios, with the least supported scenarios being those that would bring grades 6-12 attending school daily while in yellow. About 64 percent of building staff who were sent invitations responded to the survey. 

 

District Service Center and maintenance staff responding to the survey are in support of 6-12 daily attendance and K-5 alternating days in red by more than 51 percent. Thirty-seven percent of District Service Center and maintenance staff participated in the survey.  

 

The COVID-19 taskforce and the Board of Trustees review various data points and receives advice from local health authorities when considering adjustments to the pandemic plan, also known as the Fall Reopening Plan. The Board of Trustees vote on adjustments to the plan during their meetings. 

 

More than 63,000 survey invitations were sent to staff, students, and parents/guardians. Parent/guardian contact information was pulled from PowerSchool. If you did not receive this survey and are a parent, step-parent, foster parent or guardian, please complete all areas of the “Update Contact” form in PowerSchool. It is important this information is accurate to receive future communication. If you are not sure how to update this information in PowerSchool, follow the steps outlined on this page: https://www.westada.org/Page/72501.  

 

Sincerely,

West Ada School District’s COVID-19 Taskforce

 

Click the photo above or select this link to view the survey results in graph form: https://www.westada.org/Page/81809. 

All Wednesday bus stop times are 15 minutes later for morning pick up for all grades.

Morning kindergarten drop off will be seven minutes later.

Afternoon kindergarten pick up is seven minutes later. All afternoon drop-offs are on time (K-12).

This applies to the 2020-2021 school year, and corresponds to West Ada School District's 15 minute late start Wednesday meeting time for teachers.

Cascade Transportation Dept. 

Due to air quality deteriorating quickly, all high school outdoor games that begin after 6 p.m. tonight are canceled.

West Ada School District

All outside activities for our middle schools and high schools are cancelled tonight due to poor air quality. Safety is of utmost importance, so when air quality is poor the difficult decision to cancel after school outdoor events must be considered. 

Idaho’s air quality monitor: http://airquality.deq.idaho.gov/

Games and practices are cancelled when we are in a RED air quality. If in orange, programs increase the frequency of breaks and focus on lower breathing rates during that practice. If air quality improves, teams may come back later in the evening if it drops into the orange area.

The decision to cancel after school outdoor activities is made around noon for middle schools since their events typically start at 4 p.m. High school games normally begin at 6 p.m., so decisions are made a little later in the afternoon, around 2 p.m. Decisions that involve high schools have a little more freedom to wait out on practices since most of those athletes can drive.

Thank you for turning on your device or assisting in installing the filtering agent update we published on Friday, September 11. We are happy to report that our connectivity today is much better. Our deployment of the new filtering agent for District laptops has continued throughout the weekend. As of 10:45 a.m. today, 28,250 laptops (out of 33, 368 student laptops) received the update and are connecting. The installation will continue as students log in and use their devices over the course of the week.

The filter servers that supported the original filtering method, will remain in place, and continue to support devices that may attempt to connect from home and have not received the updated filtering agent.

Our technical review this morning was very promising. Our filters are showing that they can handle the traffic from all devices (iPads and laptops) connected to our system from school or at home.

There may be a small number of devices that are not working due to device specific issues or other problems not related to the filter.

If you would like assistance verifying that the update has been installed or need additional assistance getting your West Ada device working, please reach out. We have tripled the number of technicians available to answer calls from teachers, parents, and students.

Requests for support can be entered from the West Ada Web Site or parents and students can contact the Technology Service Desk Monday – Friday from 7:30a – 4:30p at 208-350-5300. Thank you for your continued patience as we continue to make our first week in yellow a successful one.

The installation of the new web filter appliances yielded critical information. We were able to increase capacity and more students connected to our systems than in previous days. We have been able to evaluate the performance of these new servers and have finally be able to determine that our current filtering method of using VPN filtering agent cannot be supported. The audio and video demands of remote learning simply generate too much traffic for the filter to support.   

We will begin implementing our backup plan and transitioning over to the new method of filtering today. This new method will drastically decrease the amount of traffic that will need go through District filters but will still provide the same level of filtering for students. The staff and parents at Pioneer School of the Arts tested this new method with us this morning and their students were able to log on successfully.  

Solutions and Guidance 

Starting at 3:30 p.m. we will begin the automated update process on student laptops. Devices that are turned on, connected to home or school wireless networks will receive the update automatically.  The update process will have in the background.  

The automated update will continue to deploy to devices that students use throughout the weekend. If you would like to validate that the update has taken place, or you wish to transition to the new system immediately you may use the attached instructions. 

Beginning Monday September 14, Team 1 students who come to school will have assistance from teachers to ensure they have the update on their device. We will verify the update on Tuesday for Team 2 students.  

To help support West Ada families with this transition, the Technology Department will be asking building technicians to answer service desk calls during the week of September 14. The District will have 15 Technology Team members available to assist parents and students with this update. The Technology Service Desk phone number is 208-350-5300. The service desk is open from 7:30 – 4:30 p.m. Requests for support can also be entered from the West Ada Web Site. 

We appreciate your continued support to help make this update happen. Thank you for all your kindness and understanding over the past week.  

Content Filtering Agent Update Instructions

We continue to explore every option to resolve our connectivity issues. During the evening, we installed two additional web filtering appliances. The implementation of these appliances immediately increases the number of devices that can connect to our system, while reducing the traffic going through the District firewall. 

We are monitoring performance of this new configuration. If there is a significant improvement, we will begin transitioning existing servers to this new configuration allowing as many students as possible to connect. 

We are also moving forward with our backup plan of transitioning to a new method of filtering. Testing of this solution continued throughout the day yesterday. The staff and parents at Pioneer School of the Arts are working with the technology team today in testing this new method. Student devices at this school will automatically convert to the new filtering method as they connect to our system. All iPads are also moving over to the backup filtering method as they receive updates. 

We have begun pushing out minor changes to District devices enabling us to quickly move to the new filtering method. These changes will happen automatically in the background when devices connect to our cloud-based device management infrastructure. As of 6 a.m. today, we have implemented these changes on more than 9,500 devices. 

Solutions and Guidance 

• If you have been using a personal device to access district resources, please continue to do so 
• If you have a District laptop, attempt to login and use it for remote learning today 

As we monitor and adjust our filtering capacity throughout the course of the morning, your help in attempting to connect using District devices will aid us in assessing the impact of the latest improvements to the system and to determine our next course of action. 

We are very hopeful today’s changes will greatly improve access to our systems. We will share additional information on our progress as soon as possible. Thank you for your continued support. 

Dear Students, Parents and Staff, 

Every effort is being made to resolve the District’s connectivity challenges many students are still experiencing. We will continue working with our industry partners until we are able to resolve the issue in full.   

An alternative method of filtering using an updated agent has been created and is being tested on devices across the District with positive initial results.  

We are working on the following changes: 

• Installing additional filtering servers to increase the number of devices that can connect to our systems 
• Publishing the updated filtering agent for installation on laptop devices 

Additional information will be communicated about installing this updated agent as soon as possible.  

Device Connectivity 9/10/2020 12:30 p.m.

The concerted efforts by the West Ada Technology Department and our industry partners (filter vendor, network, firewall and internet service providers) over the last few days have only yielded minimal improvements to our connectivity issues. We are still working with these partners to identify a root cause in an attempt to resolve the issue for all our students at one time.

As we continue these efforts, we will be finalizing testing on a backup plan we have collaborated on with our filter vendor. This alternative plan will remove the VPN agent from our workstation and implement an alternative strategy for providing filtering to our devices. 

Should we have to implement this backup plan we have no easy way to deploy this change while devices are struggling to connect to our system and are not connect to our network at a school site.  To implement the change as quickly as possible, we will:

 

• Initiate an automated process to update district laptops 
• Publish how-to documentation for students and families to manually install the update
• Provide technical support in school buildings to allow families to come to a school connect to the District network and install the update
• Continue to push the update to devices as they connect to our school network when students return in category yellow next week 
  

Device Connectivity Update 9/10/2020 at 8:15 a.m.

The Technology Team continued to meet and work with the engineering team from our filtering vendor until 10:30 p.m. last night, at which time our case was transitioned to an engineer in Australia so that work could continue throughout the night.  Members of the West Ada team have been responding to questions from the filter vendor throughout the night. The following changes have been made to improve workstations connectivity.

1. We have modified the way our firewall inspects traffic before sending it on to the filtering servers. This change is designed to improve the filter's ability to establish and maintain the VPN connections from district devices.

2.  Filtering engineers have finally identified an issue on one of the main filtering servers.  A corrupt file on the primary server has been causing slowness and impacting the ability of the system to properly balance the load across all our filtering servers. This corruption was identified during testing resolved during the evening.  Filtering tests as of  4:30 a.m. show very responsive performance. Engineers will continue to monitor our system throughout the day to determine if this is an early indicator of a server beginning to fail. Overnight shipments of additional servers are due to arrive today and can be installed if necessary. 

3. We have been pushing out a configuration change to our iPads that will allow them to connect without having to establish a VPN connection to the district filter. This change has two benefits, reducing the load on the filter and allowing more students with iPads to begin remote learning.  

Solutions and Guidance:

*If you have been using a personal device to access district resources, please continue to do so.

If you have a district iPad, please follow these steps:

*Test the device, can you browse the Internet? Can you login to Teams or other applications?  If so, please use it today.

*If the device is not working, please follow the steps in the attached PDF to turn off the VPN, restart the device and test your connectivity.

If you have a district laptop, please attempt to login and use it for remote learning today. We will be actively monitoring the filter to assess the impact of the latest improvements to the system. Thank you for your continued patience as we work through these problems.

INSTRUCTIONS FOR TURNING OFF VPN ON TABLET

As you know the start of school has been challenging and we wanted to update you on the latest technology information. The Technology Department, working in coordination with our web filtering vendor, made changes to our filtering system earlier today. This change has yielded some useful information helping our vendor find out what the problem might be and work toward solving it. The vendor has overnighted additional hardware needed in the case that they identify a hardware component that may need to be replaced. District staff and the vendor will continue the troubleshooting process into the evening.

To prepare for tomorrow, we are again encouraging students to use personal devices.  We are asking that families restart District laptops and tablets and leave them on this evening, which will allow us to push additional configuration changes to devices should that become necessary.

During times of connectivity/technical issues with devices at West Ada School District absences will not be counted against the student’s overall attendance. Teachers will work with students on any missed work or classroom activities.

Please note, the District’s Technology staff has this issue as its highest priority. We apologize for this inconvenience and appreciate your understanding as we work through technical issues. We thank our students, teachers, staff, and families for the support, and suggestions they have provided.

We hope to have a resolution soon.