Parent Night @ Hill

Sam and I spent this evening at the parent tour of Hill - a school that was one of the district's finest back in the day (70's if you must know). In the interest of full disclosure, I attended Merrill, which is unlikely to be on anybody's radar these days. At that time Hill was the neighborhood school for the Hilltop area and fed primarily into GW and East/Manual. The intervening years of the late 80's through 90's were evidently not kind to Hill - as the property values skyrocketed in the area and the average size of wallet grew to its current levels, many of the brighter and/or economically endowed neighborhood kids have opted for Graland, Kent, CA, or as the magnet concept has developed, headed to the HGT when it was at Mitchell or to Hamilton for the IPM. When we were looking at middle schools for Abby (8th grader at Hamilton IPM) a few years back, Hill wasn't a part of the conversation.

It looks as though the school is making a concerted effort to get into the mix of the "better" DPS middle schools and they hosted a nice (and quite well attended) walking tour - most of the parent questions seemed to concern the honors program which sounds like a similar program to Morey's High Strides. Kids need to be evaluated at proficient or advanced on the CSAP and test for math and reading level. The honors program is set up to have core classes on a block schedule and electives such as P.E., woodshop (one of the last in the district), drama, and art in with the traditional program kids. The work on the walls in the 6th grade wing looked pretty good, the technology lab got Sam pretty excited and the teachers that I spoke with seemed optimistic that the school was set up for success. One of the language arts teachers said that this current year has been the best she's experienced there for 10 years - the woodshop teacher said that this was one of the two best years he's had in 21 at Hill. Both teachers said that the principal was great.

Sam is still pretty set on Hamilton - most of his friends are going that way and he's familiar with it through his sister. We may have him shadow at Hill - it looks like things are heading in the right direction.