From Mr. Drummond

Dear Hill Community,

We are excited to move into the month of September this week with hopefully cooler weather on the way soon. Thank you all for continuing to send water bottles each day and beginning hydration at home!

An Important Note from AISD: Last spring, the Texas Legislature passed a new law, HB 3, requiring all Texas school districts to have at least one armed security officer at every campus during school hours.

• Austin ISD is NOT considering arming teachers or other district employees outside of Austin ISD Police Department to comply with the law.
• We are planning to hire more than 70 new SRO’s to cover all 78 elementary campuses, plus associated support staff, to meet the new requirements.
• The board is required to approve the required number of SROs per campus. They are anticipated to adopt this plan at their August 31 voting meeting.

Hill Volunteer Training and Homeroom Parent Meeting from PTA: Did you sign up to Volunteer or be a Homeroom Parent? Or maybe you are interested in Volunteering? Please Join us for Volunteering Training followed by a Homeroom Parent Meeting/Q&A on ZOOM, August 30th (2 sessions available): 8:30am or 2pm. Zoom Link: https://austinisd-org.zoom.us/j/84874901787?pwd=TGpQbUExMmZUNmFLWk1OcnB4MVFCdz09

We also added Homeroom parents for our essential teachers this year to help with various projects throughout the year. Please consider helping one of those groups as well!  Homeroom parent sign up here. Register as a volunteer here. Questions? Reach out to the Volunteer coordinator, Kristen Trout at volunteercoordinator@hillelementary.com.

Click on this link for the Hill Counselor Newsletter we want to share this year. Ms. Curran and Ms. Winfrey look forward to working with your students! You can check out what they will be learning about here throughout the year.

As is possible, we wanted to encourage our parents/guardians to avoid early pickups in the afternoon as much as possible. We want our Dillos learning in their classroom until the end of the day. Picking up early after 2:30 also puts a strain on our office staff. We appreciate your thoughtfulness in helping with this! If your student is going to be picked up early or dismissed in a different way, please communicate this as early as possible to your teacher.

We wanted to make everyone aware that the leveling process in AISD will begin in the coming weeks. Leveling is the process of equalizing staffing across the district. Teachers from under enrolled schools are moved to schools that have exceeded projected enrollment. We do not know if leveling will affect Hill. We did want to assure everyone that any affected family would be contacted in a timely manner if Hill is involved in any way. We just wanted to ensure we made our community aware that the process does take place each year throughout our district.

We have had some questions recently on our policy for Apple/Google Watches. Just as a reminder, we do treat these as cell phones if students are texting on them at school or using them as devices at school. Per our cell phone policy, we always give warnings on this first, then begin taking them up. If students bring them in school, they should be in their backpacks during the school days, just like cell phones. Thanks for ensuring your student knows not to use their Apple/Google Watch at school.

Have a nice week, Dillo Families!

Principal Drummond