Category: News

Students from both Station and Tharp have been preparing for Battle of the Books 2023 since the beginning of April. Students formed teams and read 20 different books over the past few weeks. They then competed against each other in their buildings for the title of building winner, and on Wednesday, May 17th, the top two teams from Tharp traveled to Station to compete for the 6th Grade Champion. After an impressive and fierce battle, the Station team of “Not Bad” was crowned 2023 champions after defeating the Tharp team of “Fighting Five.” Congrats to all 16 teams that competed across the two buildings!

Battle of the Books is one of many unique ways for students to complete their reading standards with a fun, engaging way of learning.

The standard states that by the end of the year, students must read and comprehend literature, including stories, dramas, and poems, in grades 6–8 text complexity and proficiently.

By Mike McDonough  

Hilliard Schools is dedicated to proactively planning for the future of the district, both in preparing its students to be Ready For Tomorrow and making wise financial decisions that make the best use of our taxpayer dollars.  

Conducting enrollment studies, including a student potential analysis for new development, is one piece of this puzzle. Our latest enrollment report projects that enrollment will remain flat or even decline slightly over the next 10 years. Even with all the new housing construction throughout the district, our enrollment experts tell us that it will take years for those communities to fully develop.   

Our Master Facility Plan is another piece of the puzzle. Phase one of our plan involved expanding all-day kindergarten to every elementary school in the district.  We were also able to expand our preschool.   The $3.8-million expansion added eight new classrooms to the existing building and replaced the current playground. 

We recently launched phase two of our plan, which includes an Educational Adequacy Assessment. This analysis will complement the facility condition and enrollment data information that we monitor on an annual basis and will inform us  on how well our buildings fit the educational delivery model today and what we want to deliver in the future. A Steering Committee, made up of experts, staff, community members, and students will reconvene in September to review the results, then hold several work sessions and a community engagement survey that will ultimately lead to a road map in addressing the needs of our facilities well into the future. 

Our schools are a reflection of our community, and as such, your feedback and ideas are crucial to the future success of our district. Stay tuned for ways you can get involved.  

Parents are a vital part of Mr.s Kalb’s 4th-grade students and classroom community at BNLC. Every Thursday, students see Mrs. Crystal Doughtry, a certified ASL teacher, along with an interpreter sign to teach students the beginning ASL. Another parent in the classroom recently reached out to say how much her daughter enjoys the sign language classes and is teaching her younger siblings at home what she is learning in school. Thank you to all the parent volunteers across the district who impact so many of our students each and every day.

Select high school students recently had the opportunity to partake in Honor Flight. This event Honors America’s senior veterans with a trip to D.C. to visit the nation’s memorials, help the veterans share their stories, and celebrate and affirm their service and homecoming.

The Hilliard students selected for this event will be serving in the military post-graduation, and they underwent hours of mandatory training before their flight, chartered by Southwest Airlines. Each student was assigned two veterans with whom they visited multiple memorials throughout Washington D.C. Students heard heartfelt stories, memories, and advice from their veterans – something they will never forget!

On May 5th, 2023, the engineering design and development (EDD) classes from Davidson, Darby, and Bradley participated in an end of the year poster show. In EDD, the students are tasked with developing a unique product that solves a current problem in our society. They spent the entirety of the school year researching, developing, and testing their projects and documented their work onto posters which they shared with the community on the 5th. At that poster show, all 21 teams were judged by a panel of external professionals, including former EDD students, based on four criteria: presentation, prototype, validity, and interest. The overall district winner for the 2023 EDD poster show was Unbuckle Buddy, a project focused on developing a modified seat belt buckle for passengers with mobility limitations. All the projects this year were exceptional, and we can’t wait to see what these young engineers do in the future!

Born and raised in Hilliard, Michelle McPhillips is a 2011 graduate of Davidson High School. Throughout high school, she was active in drama club and choir and was a member of the Student Council and an officer for the National Honor Society.

She used her experiences as a launching point, earning a degree in English Literature and Film Studies from Barnard College of Columbia University in New York City in 2015. After college, she moved to Los Angeles, California, to pursue a career in the entertainment industry.

She has worked at several entertainment companies, including in the book-to-film department of Creative Artists Agency, in the feature film division of Warner Bros., and most recently in the streaming features division of Blumhouse Productions and Paper Pictures (an independent production company). Last year, she had the chance to work on set in Stamford, Connecticut for the filming of the Netflix/Blumhouse movie “Mr. Harrigan’s Phone,” which is based on a Stephen King short story and stars Donald Sutherland and Jaeden Martell.

She recently accepted a position as an Associate Producer at Tongal, a platform for content creation that connects brands in need of creative work with an online community of directors, animators, storytellers and other creators. Michelle demonstrates that there are many ways to translate a passion for arts and entertainment into a career and is happy to answer questions from current Hilliard students. Feel free to contact her at michelle@tongal.com.  If you have an alumni you would like to see spotlighted, click here to send us an email!