District News

The safety of our students and community is always our top priority.

Recently, news outlets have been raising awareness about a drug called “Fentanyl” and “Rainbow Fentanyl”. Brightly-colored Rainbow Fentanyl can be found in many forms, including pills, powder, and blocks that can resemble candy or sidewalk chalk (photo below). Fentanyl is up to 50 times stronger than heroin and 100 times stronger than morphine. See the California Department of Health's Alert on Rainbow Fentanyl.

As we work together to keep our students and community safe, we would like to call your attention to this issue and ask parents to take some time to speak with your children about this danger. Any pill (regardless of its color, shape, or size) that does not come from a health care provider or pharmacist can contain fentanyl and can be deadly. Prevention is key to saving lives.

While we hope to never need to use it, we plan for the worst case scenario and hope it never comes to that. Our District will have a supply of Narcan, a medication that when administered rapidly enough can reverse an opioid overdose, available at all of our school sites. Key district and school-based staff are being trained to administer Narcan. (See information from the California Department of Public Health.) 

Students have a greater role this year in our second annual Innovation Team Grant Pitch Fest. In Shark Tank-style presentations on November 9th, 10 teams of CUSD students and educators pitched ideas to a panel of judges in hopes of receiving funds to support their innovative ideas.

Their proposals are aimed at three challenges students shared  in our spring student surveys: 

• How can we help students be nicer to each other? 
• How can we help our schools be cleaner? 
• Do all students feel like they belong at school? 

The Innovation Team Grant program asks school-based teams to see challenges as design opportunities to be solved through testing and refinement. 

“This is another way our district demonstrates our commitment to supporting innovation, collaboration, continual improvement, and having those closest to a challenge be part of the solution,” said Superintendent Shelly Viramontez.

“Innovation is a mindset. It’s the courage to view challenges as opportunities, and to design innovative solutions to these challenges together,” said Julie Goo, the district’s Coordinator of Innovation, Teaching and Learning.  “Engineering & Design Thinking celebrates our students’ questioning and addressing real-world problems, through identifying and prototyping possible solutions.”  

Year Two Innovation Grant Proposals

• Student Voice and Choice: Lunch Clubs, Blackford Elementary
• Think Tank: A Welcoming Space for Grades TK - 8, Campbell School of Innovation
• Lynhaven’s Kindness Rocks Day, Lynnhaven Elementary
• Rosemary Refreshing Remix, Rosemary Elementary
• Innovating Learning & Play, Capri Elementary
• Science Camp Reimagined, Castlemont Elementary
• Creating an “Arcade” for Computer Science Learning, Blackford & Rosemary Elementary
• Newcomer Ambassadors, Monroe Middle School
• Outdoor Shade, Sherman Oaks Community Charter School
• Seating Areas, Sherman Oaks Community Charter School

The judges were impressed by the thoroughness of the students’ presentations and awarded grants to all of the teams. The teams will provide follow-up reports of their progress in the spring.

Thank you to the Pitch Fest judges: Ken Johnson, Executive Director of the Campbell Chamber of Commerce; Devon Young, Designer, K12 Lab Network at Stanford D-School; Danielle M.C. Cohen, CUSD Governing Board Vice President; Pamela Cheng, CUSD Director of Teaching & Learning; Whitney Holton, CUSD Associate Superintendent of Teaching & Learning; and Dr. Shelly Viramontez, CUSD Superintendent.

The video above offers a brief overview of an event held on Saturday, November 5th, when hundreds of people, young and old, marched down Winchester Boulevard to call attention to the need for safer streets around schools and homes. 

“We are committed to making sure that no other family has to experience the tragedy that Jacob’s family has had to go through,” said District Superintendent Shelly Viramontez.

The event was organized by the Silicon Valley Sponsoring Committee in partnership with St. Lucy Catholic Church, Castlemont Elementary School, Campbell Union School District, Cadillac-Winchester Neighborhood Association and others.

“The Silicon Valley Sponsoring Committee is building power with ordinary people and their institutions across Santa Clara County,” said Lead Organizer Anna Eng. “We organized this march and assembly to make long-term change in the Cadillac-Winchester neighborhood and communities like it throughout the county.”

The community has more opportunities to be involved with improving traffic and neighborhood safety.

• Nov.  30, 6:30 pm: Community meeting, hosted by the Silicon Valley Sponsoring Committee, about neighborhood safety. More details available at the SVSC events website: https://www.siliconvalleyiaf.org/
  
• On Dec. 7, 5:00 pm, via zoom: County-wide community input meeting. Campbell USD and the City of San Jose Department of Transportation (DOT) will hold a meeting to hear from the community about where the challenging locations are for traffic, pedestrian, and bicycle safety. The information provided will be shared with officials in San Jose, Campbell, Los Gatos and Saratoga.  Zoom Link: https://zoom.us/j/97122524484?pwd=R3l2SkROWDQwTHhPTVN4UUk0bmVvZz09

Many companies have added new security features to Many online companies and school districts have added new security features to inform users if their password is compromised.. ParentSquare, our home-and-school communication tool, is doing so, too.

ParentSquare is releasing a new security feature, Password Monitor, to protect you and our community from hacking attempts by enforcing safe and secure passwords wherever possible. When signing in to ParentSquare or changing your password in a browser or mobile app, some of you may receive a version of the following alert.

“Password Reset Required - We detected that your password was exposed in a breach at another company. As a precaution, we do not allow this password to be used to sign in to your account."

Please follow the instructions on the screen to set a more secure password for your account.

We appreciate your cooperation in supporting this added safety measure.