From Principal Drummond

Dear Hill Community,

We have one week of school until the fall break! Hill School will be closed from November 22-26. We hope everyone enjoys the nice time with family. Here is a recording of our Veterans Day assembly we held virtually Thursday. Thank you to Ryan Kelly who shared his story, as well as Allison Brundidge for her help organizing.

If you missed our Principal Check-In on Thursday, you can click here for a recording of the virtual meeting. Several topics revolving around COVID protocols were brought up and discussed. We are excited that a number of our students have already received their first dose of the vaccine! Please know that there is guidance around what to do if students experience symptoms, as many adults do, following the shot:

• Individuals may display flu-like symptoms (fever, fatigue, headache, chills, muscle or joint pain) after receiving a dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. Symptoms should not last longer than 72 hours (3 days) after receiving the vaccine dose. Individuals should stay home if and while they are experiencing symptoms from the vaccine.
• If an individual is displaying symptoms after 72 hours from receiving their first or second dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, or is experiencing symptoms that wouldn’t be a result of the vaccine (e.g. cough, congestion, etc.), they will be required to isolate for 10 days or will need to follow the district’s return to work/school criteria.

We also have updated protocols that began this past week for students who are deemed to be “close contacts” to another individual who tests positive for COVID-19. Up until this past week, there was a mandatory 7 day quarantine period. Now, we will follow the protocol below until further notice from district health services. The family of a student who is a “close contact” and not fully vaccinated now has 3 choices in terms of procedure they can follow:

Option 1: Students can test to stay. This means that a student will continue attending school and will be required to test on day five by AISD staff or a testing partner.  If negative on day five, the individual will continue as usual. If positive on day five, the individual will be required to start the ten-day isolation at that time. If an individual does not get/provide consent to test, they will need to be quarantined for a ten-day period.

Option 2: A student may quarantine for four days and return on day five with a negative rapid or PCR test result that is documented.

Option 3: A student may quarantine for the entire ten-day period and return on day 11.

We realize this is a big shift. As always, if your student/family is in this situation in the future, we will walk you through everything. Additionally, you can access free testing at one of the AISD hub sites from 8:00 am to 2:00 pm Monday-Friday. The one nearest our community is Pillow Elementary. Tests can be accessed for any reason now! A list of the testing hubs and additional information can be found at https://www.austinisd.org/student-health/covid-19/rapid-testing. Thank you and please let Principal Drummond know if you have any questions. 

We are excited for the return of our UIL competition that will be held at Doss in February. Letters with more information on how your child can participate were sent home in Wednesday folders. You can access that letter here as well. Please note that we will be holding a UIL Virtual Information session after school tomorrow (Monday) at 3:30. Here is the Zoom link. We will work to answer your questions but also ensure we take down questions we may need to find the answer to! It has been a few years. We are looking forward to getting this program back on track for those families interested.

To wrap up, the excellent Murchison Middle School Fine Arts department wanted to share this flyer with our outgoing families on their programming. Also, as the holidays are coming up, we wanted all of our families to know about a home delivery opportunity for food if you are experiencing food insecurity. You can check out this flyer for more information on this great resource from the Central Texas Food Bank. Please also reach out to administration and/or your counselor if you could use support during this time.

Have an amazing week!

Principal Drummond