Team members at Dora Moore showing their school spirit during a recent virtual meeting.

As Superintendent Susana Cordova shared yesterday, we have some important updates about our return-to-school planning and the health precautions we're taking to keep the DPS community safe. If you haven't already, please read that update.

To recap, in light of changing conditions, we wanted to share some of these updates and decisions based on the latest guidance we’ve received from our health partners:

November's ballot contains two initiatives that will directly impact DPS -- the "Debt Free Schools" Mill Levy (initiative 4A) and the Bond Measure (initiative 4B). If approved by voters, critical funding would go toward capital improvement projects and operational expenses, including school cooling and air conditioning, ECE program expansion, nursing and mental health supports, cost-of-living increases for teachers and much more. Click here for a closer look at how funding would be allocated across the district and at specific schools or visit bond.dpsk12.org for more information.

ICYMI: Please review the election guidance and resources for team members to learn more about how to practice your civic duty while also following guidelines that apply to public employees.

Infinite Campus (IC) has created a new Blended Learning tool that allows you to identify students who are physically in a building for learning, students who are virtually attending classes, or a combination of both. This new tool is available to your school now.

To learn more on how to use the new Blended Learning tool, please review these resources:

If you have questions, please email Marc Long, Infinite Campus Product Manager.

Effective now, any DPS team member who visits portal.dpsk12.org to access the Teacher Portal, Principal Portal or Office Professional Portal will be automatically redirected to a new landing page. (This does not include parent or student accounts.) The new landing page will help staff members more easily navigate to the portal of their choosing; the page will only display which portals each staff member has access to. Please note, anyone who bookmarks or directly visits the URL to a specific portal will still be taken to that particular portal. More details and screenshots are available here.

Join these webinar series to hear from expert teachers, who will be showcasing how they are using our learning management systems.

National Prescription Drug Take Back Day is Oct. 24, and now is a great opportunity to teach your students about the risks of prescription drug abuse and misuse. Rise Above Colorado has developed the Not Prescribed curriculum, an hour-long lesson that provides teens with the science and stories to understand the risks of misusing prescription drugs as well as the tools to advocate for their own health and the health of their peers. This lesson provides educators with an online, interactive presentation, as well and a facilitator’s guide to support educators with the content. To learn more about how prescription drug abuse and misuse impacts the DPS population, take a minute to watch this video, or visit denverrap.org/prescription.

Denver Public Schools sends all district newsletters and critical employee communications through Constant Contact. Please do not unsubscribe your dpsk12.org email address from any message; if you unsubscribe from one newsletter or one communication, you will be removed from all other district-managed email lists in Constant Contact. If you have any questions, please email newsletters@dpsk12.org.