A Letter from Principal Drummond

Dear Hill Community,
We want to thank everyone who made our first week of the phase-in process so successful. Our staff went above and beyond with their flexibility, dedication, and teamwork to support our learners on and off campus. Our families who returned to campus followed our procedures very well to make arrival and dismissal completely manageable. And thank you to our virtual families who stayed so understanding during this time of transition. It is truly a community effort, and we are so proud as campus leaders!

On Monday, we will be welcoming more students back to campus for week 2 of our phase-in process. Here are the next groups who can report on October 12th:

• 1st and 2nd grade students
• Students receiving the following specialized services: all Special Education students, students with dyslexia, 504, speech.
• Siblings of students in prioritized groups for this week.

As before, please let your teachers know if you have a sibling of one of these groups returning as those are the toughest for us to track!

For all of our returning families, thanks again for looking over our Hill Reopening Plan prior to returning. Also, below this letter, I have included several paragraphs from last week that are still applicable and important to know. Thanks for reading if Monday will be your first day back on campus! Especially the piece on the AISD app for arrival and dismissal, as well as the process for switching from virtual learning to face-to-face learning.

We will have a Principal Check-In this week on Thursday, October 15th, at 5:00 pm. We hope everyone can make it, but as always, a recording will follow.

Zoom Meeting
Meeting ID:864 1876 9407
Passcode: Dillos

We have so many positive things happening at Hill School we want to update you all on. It was just announced that Hill is an SEL SEED Model Campus this year! We want to give a big Dillo Cheer to Ms. Stover and Ms. Winfrey for their hard work to make this possible. We will be able to model and share our best practices at school with other campuses through this designation. Our “playground” this year will also look different over the next few weeks. We have some Anderson HS students supporting us with painted pathways throughout the back of our school to aid with our restricted recess spaces. Thank you to Julie Neitzel and Watson Murals for supporting this. Also, an Eagle Scout at Anderson and former Dillo, Carter Hull, will be creating a better play area around our boat in Hill Harbor to support our students this year. We want to thank our amazing PTA and private donors who have helped secure window screens and air purifiers for many of our classrooms. As we add students weekly for face to face learning, we know these safety measures only make everyone feel more comfortable on campus. These are just a few of the amazing things we wanted to highlight this week.

Austin ISD wanted us to share with our communities information on free COVID-19 testing available if the need arises. Again, thanks for pre-screening prior to coming to school each day!

Have a wonderful weekend, everyone! We look forward to welcoming more of our learners to campus Monday. Click here for the important information again from last week!