From Principal Drummond

Dear Hill Community,

It was a fantastic week of learning at Hill School with your Dillos! We are enjoying building our communities in the classroom and as a campus at our morning assembly that begins at 7:30 am each day.

Safety is always a priority on campus. We wanted to let everyone know that our first two drills will take place this Friday. We will hold our first lockdown drill which will practice what to do in our classrooms if there was an immediate threat on campus. We will be reviewing protocol as a faculty this week to ensure we follow correct procedures while supporting our students. The other drill will be our monthly evacuation drill which we used to call a fire drill. If you have a student who has been at Hill in past years, we have utilized these drills for years and practiced them. We look forward to learning from them so we can continue to improve our campus safety.

We want to give our parents/guardians a big Dillo Cheer for supporting safe arrival and dismissal practices each day. We’ll continue to give reminders and best practices these first few weeks. Here are a couple:

• The back parking lot is for staff only parking each day. Families should not park in back spaces in the bus loop.
• We do encourage parking and walking your student from Robbie Lane if you are not using the car line. There is no drop off on the street. You can drop off your student at the back door that the back driveway leads to. Please do not cut through the playground or walk through the bus loop as that back door is for our bus riders.

Below this letter, we have again attached our arrival/dismissal procedures. Thanks for reviewing if you have not done so already.

For our incoming and interested Pre-K4 families: Thank you for your patience as we continue to work through longer approval times for students than normal. Hill Pre-K is open for business with plenty of room for any interested family! Spread the word. We have an incredible program.

We encourage you to get involved and volunteer at Hill School this year. We invite you to join us this Wednesday (8/24) at 9:30 am or 2:00 pm for our first two volunteer training opportunities of the year by Zoom. To volunteer at Hill this year, you will need to receive this training. There will be other opportunities if needed. You can find the two unique Zoom links below:

9:30 AM Meeting
https://austinisd-org.zoom.us/j/83221603403?pwd=WklNRmFqdDZJQTZ1T25zcGIybk1ZUT09
Meeting ID: 832 2160 3403
Passcode: dillos

2:00 PM Meeting
https://austinisd-org.zoom.us/j/83699634940?pwd=eWNxcFdBU1pUWjhNV3F6eHQ4UHZXZz09
Meeting ID: 836 9963 4940
Passcode: dillos

One way to get involved this year is presenting to our students at one of our Monday College and Career Day assemblies. It is an opportunity for our Hill parents to share their career and educational experiences with our Dillos. Here is a note from our coordinator: We are looking for parents to volunteer or to nominate someone who may have an interesting story to tell. The goal behind College Days is to get our Dillos thinking about what they want to do and be when they grow up — and most importantly what type of education, training, and experience is needed to get there.  Now that assembly is back in full swing (Dillo cheer!), we will invite College Day guests to speak, one each month, during the morning assembly for no more than five minutes.  However, if guests are unable to appear in-person we can accommodate a virtual pre-recorded interview option.  Each guest can speak to the following four main questions:

• Tell us a little bit about your job and what’s a typical day for you?
• What type of formal education do you have and how has it prepared you for your career?
• What’s most rewarding about your job?
• What advice would you give any Dillos who are interested in pursuing a career similar to yours?

If you’d like to participate or nominate another parent, please reach out to Austin Holder at eugeneholder@gmail.com. Thank you!

We are inviting all students, staff, and community members who are interested in advocating for equitable changes across the district to join the Equity Advisory Committee and its various subcommittees. Check out these flyers for more information if you would like to get involved.

Lastly, 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 we were affected. We just wanted to ensure we made our community aware that the process does take place each year throughout our district.

We’d like to end with a big Dillo Cheer to one of our neighbors, Susie Rich, who volunteered as a crossing guard on Friday where there was a need. Thank you all for being a part of our school community and supporting our kids. We look forward to seeing you for week two, everyone!

Jack Drummond