Category: News

To prepare all students without exception to be Ready for Tomorrow, we must create authentic partnerships with our community.  We want to hear your ideas, thoughts, and opinions about how your schools should approach a changing landscape. That’s why the Hilliard Board of Education created the Community Conversation Program.

How we educate students is changing rapidly.  There are many choices about how schools will look and work as we move forward. These decisions need to be made as a community and with the consideration of many different voices.  We need to understand our residents and build a better relationship between the school district and the community. This demands a different kind of conversation. Sometimes, that will mean reaching out to a specific group in our community. Other times, it means defining an issue or topic that demands community input.  There will be board members and district administrators at each conversation.

These will happen quarterly.

• Tuesday, March 7 – 5:30 pm at the Hub (3859 Main Street, Hilliard)
• Tuesday, June 13 – 9 am at the Hub
• Tuesday, September 5 – 5:30 pm at the Hub
• Tuesday, December 5 – 9 am at Central Office (2140 Atlas Street, Columbus)

Please join us to share your voice.

Alumni Spotlight – Kellan Grainger

Kellan Grainger is a 2018 graduate of Hilliard Bradley High School where he took full advantage of the district’s engineering pathway. This provided him with a head start on college and his future career goals. 

He went on to attend the University of Cincinnati and graduated in 2023 with a degree in aerospace engineering. He participated in several co-ops throughout college, including working for Maverick Molding, which manufactures high-performance polymers and composites for jet engines, as an engineer with Rhinestahl Customer Tooling Solutions, a global leader in aircraft engine tooling, and as an engineer at Honda R&D where he worked in development. Each experience further solidified his love for engineering, and aeronautics specifically. 

Today, he is a staff engineer in Flight Simulator Engineering for United Airlines in Colorado. The facility at which he works houses 63 full-motion, full-cockpit flight simulators. His role involves maintaining seven of these simulators and six flight training devices on which pilots train to fly the 737 MAX. 

The simulators are used up to 20 hours per day with pilots training in four-hour segments. Grainger said they are similar to a videogame, which needs constant updates, but the technology evolves at a much higher level. 

Hilliard presented him with the opportunity to learn coding starting in middle school, which directly impacts his career today. He said his engineering teachers throughout high school, particularly Mr. Armelie, also encouraged his interest in the field. In fact, they inspired him to one day want to teach engineering classes.

Hack-a-thon hosted in partnership with Ohio State University at The Hub 11/18/23 – Sign-up for Free Today

High School:I/O is a one-day hackathon for high schoolers hosted by OHI/O, Ohio State University’s hackathon program. We aim to provide high school students with an opportunity to learn about computer science in a fun, engaging, and inclusive environment. It is a wonderful resume builder. No programming or coding experience is required but could be beneficial. All high school students are welcome to participate.

Meet and work with other passionate, fun and creative students to build real technology projects. There will also be the opportunity to develop new friendships, build connections with professional mentors, and learn soft skills for success in the real world. Students will be able to earn prizes for their solutions. Lunch and dinner are provided. The event is free of cost for participants! Register Today!

Mrs. Smith’s Forensic Science class at Davidson High School took part in a unique lesson where students created a storyline regarding the reason for arson in a structure. Once they created their storyline, students had to build a two-story structure (composed of popsicle sticks and wood glue) that contained at least three windows, a door, and a roof. Norwich Township Fire Department then came in to discuss the dangers of arson and accidental fires with the class. Fire Investigator Darryl Miller ignited the structures the students built based on each group’s storyline. The next period after the burn, students used our knowledge of arson vocabulary and burn patterns to analyze and discern where the fires started in each structure.

Bradley Teacher, Coach, Trades Textbooks for Triathlon

Some teachers like to take it easy during their breaks. Others, like Kyle Heinlen, a math teacher and cross country and track coach at Bradley High School, take advantage of the extra time to pursue their interests, like training for and participating in a triathlon.

This was his second year participating in the Ironman 70.3, which took place in Sandusky, Ohio, and involved a 1.2-mile swim, 56-mile bike ride, and 13.1-mile run. His training regimen began in months before the race and sandwiched both ends of his day teaching and coaching, usually beginning at 4:30 a.m. On Mondays, he focused on swimming and weight lifting; Tuesdays on biking; Wednesdays and Thursdays on running and leg strengthening; Fridays on biking; and on the weekends, longer biking and running combination routines.

He said he learned a lot about his nutrition intake the first time around and it paid off this year. He cut 25 minutes off his previous race time, earning him a personal record. He’s thankful to be able to share and apply the lessons he’s learned through his extracurricular endeavors with his students.

“I try to teach them to persevere when it’s hard. You will come to a point in the race, whether a literal race or in your academics or life in general, where you will hit a wall,” he said. “My goal is to give them the training they need to get to the finish line. Learning to love the process is important too, so I try to get my students to fall in love with the process.”

What’s next on the docket for Mr. Heinlen? He just ran in the Columbus Marathon and he has his sights set on a full Ironman, which is double a triathlon. Your Hilliard community will be behind you all the way!