Category: News

The first-graders at Washington Elementary teamed up with Kelly Riley, our Innovation & Discovery Specialist, to create a unique literacy/technology project that focused on the book Our Favorite Day of the Year. The first-graders have been studying a variety of holidays and special events that are celebrated throughout the year. In the book students learn about each other’s favorite day of the year. After students share their favorite family traditions and holidays, the children recognize the similarities and differences and how that can bring them together!
Their project was based on each student’s “Favorite Day of the Year.”

Each first-grader chose a favorite day of the year and wrote 3-5 things that make their favorite day special to them. Students made an artifact (built something or labeled or illustrated a piece of paper) that represented each special thing about their favorite day. The first-graders used Tale-Bots to code a path to each of those special things on the Tale-Bot mat.

Hoffman Trails Teacher Returns to her Roots

Born and raised in Hilliard, Meghan Caudill is a proud Davidson High School graduate. She’s known since she was 5 that she wanted to be a teacher. Better yet, she knew that she wanted to teach in the very community that gave her her start. 

That dream came to fruition two years ago. After graduating from the University of Dayton in 2017, she was hired at Whitehall City Schools, where she taught kindergarten and first grade for four years. All the while, she maintained her goal of returning to Hilliard. Today, she is a first grade teacher at Hoffman Trails Elementary, the same school she attended.

“It’s a cool and humbling experience to be back in Hilliard and at the same school I went to,” she said. “My fifth grade teacher is still here and remembers me just as I was in fifth grade, and it’s neat to see my students experiencing some of the same things I remember doing.”

She credits her time as a cheerleader and her involvement with Student Council in high school for developing her into the leader she is today. 

She said, “Hilliard Schools more than prepared me for life after high school. The education here is very community based, and I think that helps students prepare for the real world.”

Miss Caudill’s brother is a teacher at Darby High School, her family still lives just minutes from where she teaches, and she and her fiance recently moved to Hilliard, so she is Hilliard all the way!

Heritage 7th-grader Lauren Sutch placed first in the City of Columbus Oratorical Competition in December and was an invited speaker at the City MLK Breakfast at the Convention Center last Monday. She will be representing the city at the state competition in April and, if successful, continuing to the national competition in DC this summer. She placed 2nd in the city competition and 1st in the Hilliard Optimist competition last year.

Lauren got involved in the oration when she was a student of Gail Tanner’s at Hilliard Arrow. Gail encouraged, trained, and supported Lauren and other students to compete. She was at the competition Saturday with a handful of her students, and Lauren was thrilled to have her support. Gail deserves a great deal of credit for Lauren’s success.

As we head into the new year, a time of reflection and for celebrating great things to come, I wanted to celebrate some of the wonderful achievements of our Hilliard City School District.  This past year our district performed proficient or above in eighteen out of twenty academic achievement metrics on the Ohio Report Card.  Better still, on sixteen of the eighteen categories where we were proficient or above, we also surpassed the statewide average.  Metrics like these place us within the top-performing quartile of all school districts in Ohio.  We are an incredibly high academically performing district, and partially due to this fact, as well as many others, the district was voted to be one of the top three public school districts in Central Ohio in the Columbus Dispatch’s Best Of Columbus survey.  That is a tremendous feat, and one that we could not have accomplished without the expertise of our educational professionals, the high expectations set by our administrators, the hard work of our support staff, support and love that parents of our district give their children at home, and of course the determined mentality of our students striving towards success.  While we will always have more work to do, and while we will never rest on our laurels, we must also take time to celebrate the tremendous academic heights our district has proven capable of.  Congratulations to everyone, because this is truly a community victory.  Together we will accelerate into the future of HCSD.  Thank you all and happy new year!

Brian Perry is a member of the Hilliard City Schools Board of Education.

Jenny Bertagna is a 2002 graduate of Davidson High School, and ever since becoming a REALTOR® in 2016, she’s taken the industry by storm! She recently earned the $25 Million Dollar Award from Columbus REALTORS® and manages her own group — the Bertagna Group — with Coldwell Banker Realty. 

Upon graduating, she earned a bachelor’s in business management from Kent State University and had an accomplished career in medical supply sales before making the move to real estate. 

“Jenny is just an all-around great individual. I had the privilege of having her as a student, softball player, and caregiver for my children when they were young,” said Karen Downard, a technology coach at Davidson High School. 

If you have an alumni you would like to see spotlighted, click here to send us an email!

This past fall, we kicked off a strategic planning process. The goal of this work is to create a set of common goals and key characteristics of our Portrait of a Learner that will guide our district, but more importantly, our students, into the future. 

It’s important that the final outcome of this work be reflective of our community. That’s why we created a Strategic Design Team, made up of staff, students, families, and community members. Our third of four meetings was held December 8, where our partner, Battelle for Kids, reviewed survey results from the previous meeting listing the core competencies the Design Team, and those who filled out our community survey, believes are essential for our Portrait of a Learner. 

Results were broken out by group (students, parents, staff, etc.), allowing the Design Team to hone in on the top competencies — skills like critical thinking, empathy, communication and adaptability. Small group discussions followed where Design Team members analyzed definitions for each competency and made suggested changes. The team also considered draft logos that will help our community easily identify our Portrait of a Learner work once finalized. 

We look forward to completing this work soon in advance of sharing the new vision with our community in the spring. Thank you to those who have shared their ideas and feedback. It’s not too late to get involved! You can follow along with this work on our website.