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School Meal Menus - New Vendor | Linqconnect Replaces Nutrislice - Website References
All school curators whose schools serve school meals (like lunch),
- Like most of you, we learned very, very recently (within the last week and a half) that the vendor for the school lunch menus changed from Nutrislice to Linqconnect.
- However, there is a lot of good news from this. Those teal bars at the top of your websites (the ones that say Schoology, SIS, Google Workspace, etc. have a link that says "School Meals." Note that this is a change from what it had said before: "Lunch Menus" have all been updated for you. Long days, but it was worth the time and effort to have your site point to your link, rather than a general homepage that would then require visitors to select your school menu from a dropdown list.
- We have changed those on all of the sites. That particular bar is locked from editing for a few different reasons. Ironically and entirely coincidentally, the request from that office to change "Lunch Menus" to "School Meals" (which makes a lot of sense, as we serve more than lunch at many of our locations) coincided with the need to change your school-specific Nutrislice menu to the Linqconnect one. I am grateful (lucky?) that these two changes were accomplished simultaneously. All you'll need to do for those teal bars is check that the link goes to your menu and says "School Meals" and not a different phrase like "School Menus" or something different.
- When we went into that menu bar to make the Linqconnect and School Meal reference changes, we also changed MySchoolBucks to point to Online Payment of Student Fees on the FCPS central site instead of directly to the vendor website. This allows parents/students/etc. to learn of online payment of student fees written with the FCPS lingo, we'd like them to read first rather than going straight to a vendor login page.
- Regarding the other potential places on the site, this is an excellent opportunity for you to remove any references to the menus and MySchoolBucks from your website. We did not have that teal bar when we first launched the sites. Because of this, we added the lunch menus in spots that made the most sense. That teal bar has been a saving grace in a way. It's a part of the template. That teal bar is present regardless of where you are on your website.
- I've included in this quick tutorial https://youtu.be/3RRNzV73jPE on the potential places those references might be and what I recommend doing. My recommendation would be to delete any other references. If the parent/student can rely on that teal bar, there is no need to have those anywhere else on the site. I've included where those references might be and the best steps for removing those references.
- Some schools may also have a food and nutrition page. Food and Nutrition Services has asked to either remove those pages or pare down the content so that specific steps (that have changed over the years) aren't listed on the individual sites but on the central site. If you search "food" in your public site search, you can tell whether you have this page. If you have this, my suggestion would be to unpublish or delete this page and, instead, have something on a page like your resource page, a link that points to https://www.fcps.edu/family-resources/student-safety-and-wellness/food-and-nutrition-programs. You could do this as a callout one-up with the link above that says, "Learn about food and nutrition programs on the FCPS website" as the link text.
3-Hour Early Release Events Added to Elementary School Sites
Elementary School Curators,
The 3-hour early release dates have been added to the elementary school websites as events.
We added these events as part of two groups so that your school's seven 3-hour early release Mondays will only appear on your site.
Each event links to the central site where the node was created. Because each of the created nodes links to the central site, the central site will have all 14 three-hour early release dates, which reflect all of the schools. We had to get slightly creative with how we created these.
https://www.fcps.edu/events?keywords=three-hour&field_start_date=&field_start_date_1=
Only your seven events will appear on your site. When you click on the event, you'll see the 14 across the division for the year, along with a link to the region and pyramid maps and a link to where they can learn all they need to know about 3-Hour Early Release Mondays.
The difference is that the 3-hour early release that applies to your pyramid/school will have all of yours listed first.
For example, elementary schools in the pyramids that begin on September 16 will have their pyramids and dates listed first. The content is flipped for elementary schools in the pyramids that begin on September 23, and your pyramids and dates are listed first.
Bonnie Brae example - https://www.fcps.edu/event/three-hour-early-release-9-16-24
Weyanoke example - https://www.fcps.edu/event/three-hour-early-release-9-23-24
The advantages of pushing them from the central site are that we can be confident each elementary school has them, and the content is what the division wants them to say. Also, if something changes (maybe there are snow days on February 10 and March 10, or we want to add another sentence to the description, or there is an instance where a specific elementary school in their list pyramid actually will be using the other set of dates, etc.), we would only need to tweak (at most) 14 events, and any change will be reflected as it should on your site.
TLDR?
The seven 3-hour elementary school early release Mondays have been successfully added centrally to appear correctly on your elementary school website.
Request to Add Special Education Callout Link to FCPS Central Site Page
A request was made by the Special Services Department to add a link to the special education page on the public website. Most schools will already have a callout on your special education page. If you could quickly check your special education page. If there is a callout somewhere on your page, that points to https://www.fcps.edu/academics/academic-overview/special-education-instruction, that is perfect. There is nothing needed on your end. If your page does not have this, the quickest way to do this is to add a callout one-up.
URL: https://www.fcps.edu/academics/academic-overview/special-education-instruction
Link Text: Learn more about special education instruction on the FCPS website.
A few examples:
- https://brookfieldes.fcps.edu/department/special-education
- https://franklinms.fcps.edu/academics/departments/special-education
- https://southlakeshs.fcps.edu/department/special-education
Packing Your Website for the Migration - Comms Camp Presentation
Thanks to all of you who attended Comms Camp on July 30.
I created a virtual edition of my presentation for those who couldn't attend (or might want to watch certain parts again. I timestamped each of the 10 topics I presented.
Topics and Topic Goals (also in the recording)
Virtual Presentation (Recorded on 7/30/24) - Timestamped by topic.
Brandfolder for Promo Icons, Hero Images, Announcement Thumbnails, Etc.
https://brandfolder.com/fairfaxcountypublicschools/web-resources - this is where the images are located.
FCPS Brandfolder Account - these are the steps to create your account the first time.
Elementary School Early Release Mondays - Events and Announcement
For elementary schools only.
We will be pushing from the central office the Monday early releases as events to the elementary school calendars. We know that pyramids group those dates. You will have the early release Mondays that pertain to your school.
We will also push a central site announcement to all elementary school sites that links to https://www.fcps.edu/family-resources/safety-and-transportation/limited-early-release-mondays.
We will do both of these during the first week of August.
A good place for this to be permanent on your website (that you can send out as a link when needed) would be your bell schedule page. A good example to follow is https://wolftrapes.fcps.edu/about/bell-schedule.
Each school will not need to create the Early Release Mondays as events.
Removal of Attendance Forms
The Department of Special Services sent out a 6/10/24 Actiongram at the end of last week regarding removing attendance forms from schools as the county pivots to ParentVUE to report full-day absences in 24-25. Mary, Karen, and I learned of the Actiongram request on the same day it was sent out. 6/12 was the first time we had to get some clarification on the specific ask.
For this Actiongram request, I've included a 9-minute tutorial (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjMqHYtFbDQ) on how to meet the request of removing the form from your sites, the recommended language to include, and the link to point to on the central site (https://www.fcps.edu/attendance) that references the change for next year. By linking out to this page, any verbiage or updates as their project moves forward will eliminate the need for a school to keep up with those wording/updates.
Moving to this new way of reporting attendance will have minimal impact on your school's website. It will actually lighten the load quite a bit in the long run. Of course, there will be questions about why the county is moving to ParentVUE. If your school principal, office staff, etc., have questions about that, please have them email Laura Thieman (Senior Manager I, Student Attendance & Engagement • Special Services) at [email protected]. Laura and her team will be setting up and conducting training with the school office on those things.
Based on where the project is, reporting attendance through ParentVue will only be for full-day absences at the start of the year. As the option will not be available to report late arrivals or early checkouts, there will almost certainly result in an increase in the volume of reporting absences via the telephone. If your school uses your school's attendance email address as an option for reporting attendance (such as https://forestvillees.fcps.edu/about/attendance-reporting) , continue to promote that. If you don't use your school's email address as an option to report attendance (https://danielsrunes.fcps.edu/about/attendance-reporting), it could be an opportunity for your school to add this as an option, but you certainly do not need to start using the attendance email address to report attendance. That choice is up to the school.
For schools (mostly secondary) with a general attendance page separate from their attendance form page, this is an opportunity to combine those pages into one if you'd like. An example of that is https://columbiaes.fcps.edu/attendance/attendance-reporting (thank you, Shannon!). The other way is to keep the two pages exactly as you have them and just remove/change any reference on your general attendance page that says "attendance form" to "report attendance," "reporting attendance procedures," etc.
Closer to the start of the school year, we will be pushing an announcement to school sites that mentions these changes, points to https://www.fcps.edu/attendance for additional info, and says something like, "view your school's attendance page to view ways of reporting attendance."
If, after watching the tutorial, you have a website technical question or need assistance with this Department of Special Services Actiongram item, feel free to email me.
For non-website questions that your school may have about attendance reporting through ParentVUE, please email Laura Thieman at [email protected].
Recording of Website Chat – May 10, 2024
Recording: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-8qngmIX1BJPb6zMBApHyeSRkTjcdr4K/view?usp=sharing
Title: Getting Your Website Summer Ready
Agenda: As you prepare to leave the website for summer break, use this nifty checklist to help you make sure you are not forgetting anything and you are ready for fall.
Checklist: (Preparing Your School Website For The 24-25 School Year) https://docs.google.com/document/d/1eokZEK_gYxfER8ch-EzFjOePHFSEU1hv1wp6KlNY0Y0/edit?usp=sharing
School Website Manual
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1QUHegINYAdB32UkFyfDjX8MEPhNRWMWWQghMij4MI4Q/edit?usp=sharing
Schoology Group
Join our Schoology group, OCCR - School Web Curator User Group, at https://lms.fcps.edu/group/5107004446.
Previous Training Resources
- Website Training for New Site Administrators
- Advanced Website Training for Web CuratorsSchool
- Website Events and Announcements Training