An Update from Principal Drummond

Dear Hill Community,
Welcome to our weekly update as we say goodbye to July! Our staff is excited for a new year and is ready to connect with your students again soon.

We have received further guidance from the Texas Education Agency that gives us information to continue building our schedules. We look forward to sharing those in the next few weeks as we finalize them with the latest information. The first day of school is still August 18th and our first 3 weeks of classes will be all remote learning from home. As we have seen this entire month, information and guidance can change daily. We will keep you updated if we learn more or plans change.

Like last week, I really want to highlight the excellent information available in this week’s Summer Vision newsletter from AISD. There, they have great updates on staff learning and telemedicine services available to families this year. Please check out the section on “Technology Updates”. They describe the different ways all of our families who need technology support can work towards securing it. For new to AISD families, please know that we were told you should be able to request technology in the parent cloud beginning August 3rd, if you have finished registration. As stated, thank you for your patience as a national shortage of technology is putting availability behind in some cases. We appreciate anyone who is willing to turn in Chromebooks they will not be using that were borrowed to make them available for other families in need. If you have other questions, our assistant principal Myra Josey can support you at myra.josey@austinisd.org.

If you have not done so already, please take the time to complete the latest Family Pulse Survey 2 that was sent out this last week. Each family should have received an individualized link for their student(s). If for some reason you did not receive a personalized link, you can still use this Reopening Family Pulse Survey 2 link that is more generic. Please only complete once per family. This is due TOMORROW according to the newsletter, so thank you again for giving us this crucial information!

We want to invite everyone to our upcoming Principal Check-in (afternoon coffee) this Thursday, August 6th, at 4:00 pm. We will update everyone on the week leading up to the start of school and then plans for the week of. Here is the Zoom information:

Meeting ID: 852 7768 2861
Passcode: dillos
Join Zoom Meeting

To give our families a preview, I wanted to highlight some key events taking place the week of August 10th:
Parent BLEND/Seesaw Training (Tuesday, August 11th, at 4:30 pm)
We are excited to offer all of our Hill parents and guardians the opportunity to have our district technology department lead you through the basics of BLEND and Seesaw, the two learning platforms we will be primarily using this year. The goal is to support our parents so they can best support their learners.

New Parent Night/ Pre-k & Kindergarten Back to School Night (Thursday, August 13th, at 5:00 pm)
*We want to welcome all of our new Hill families to learn more about Hill, our staff, and our traditions. The first 30 minutes or so will be for all new Hill families. After this introduction, we will have all of our incoming Pre-K and Kindergarten families stay on for introductions and information pertinent to those grade levels. We encourage you to bring your questions as well so everyone feels ready for the first day of school!

Dillo Pickup Day (Friday, August 14th, from 10:00 am- 4:00 pm):
*This is an opportunity to pick up your Hill merchandise, 2019-20 yearbooks, purchased school supplies, and more. See below for more detailed information!

As I will keep saying, thank you all for your patience as information changes weekly. We will again record our Principal Check-In this week in case you can’t make it. We look forward to seeing many of you there! Have a great week.

Jack Drummond