We are excited for this week’s No Place for Hate Dress Up Day!  Friday, February 25th, dress up like a celebrity and make kindness famous!  No scary costumes or face masks please.

Wristbands Are Ready for Purchase HERE!

Hill’s Country Carnival is back on Friday, March 4th! Come celebrate the extra day off with an evening under the stars filled with all your Carnival favorites and some new additions. That’s right, pedestal joust, rock wall, football toss, and soda toss are back! We’ll also have double the petting zoo for less wait time and more cuddly goat time. 

YES! The famous HILL HAUNTED HOUSE is back and better than ever. Tell your friends. The 5th graders have been hard at work to make it the best Haunted House yet. New this year – we’ll have local food trucks in our “Carnival Food Truck Park”. Enjoy local favorites Tinney’s BBQ, Burger 5280, Taco Baby, Fancy Fluff, Cold Cookie Co, and more!

Yep, the rumors are true. There will be live armadillo racing and photo opps throughout Carnival so make sure you don’t miss out on this dillo-rific opportunity. Purchase your wristbands today at hillelementary.com/carnival. Prices increase on Feb 28th, so purchase today!

How Can I Help?

DONATE regular size Pringles cans and 17oz soda bottles. Kids don’t care about brands…we’ll take the store brand. Please leave in the Carnival donation boxes near the school’s front doors. Don’t have time to run to the store? Click here to donate and we’ll do the shopping. These are very popular booths…thank you for your donation!

Don’t forget to sign up for a VOLUNTEER slot at your class’s booth. It takes the whole school to make this event special. Shifts are short and you’ll always have someone working with you at your booth. https://www.signupgenius.com/go/5080D4EAFA82FA4FE3-hill

Hill Sports Days are back and better than ever! This means we need parent volunteers to help run stations and direct classes where to go next.  There are numerous spots available!  Please check out the Google spreadsheet and choose days and times that work best for you.  Please note that there are different Sports Days dates for 3rd-5th grade (Thursday, 3/10) and K-2nd grade (Friday, 3/11).  There is a tab at the bottom for each date.  You will not be able to edit this sheet, so please email Coach Monreal (melissa.monreal@austinisd.org) or Coach Shaw (tyler.shaw@austinisd.org) to sign up!  We will send you more information before Sports Days so that you are prepared.  If all spots are filled, we’d still love to have you as a floater!  Thank you, and we can’t wait to see you!

Join the Hill Counseling Team for a book study on No Drama Discipline, by Daniel J. Siegel, MD and Tina Payne Bryson, PhD.  Siegel and Bryson offer a toolkit for navigating big feelings and tantrums, and lovingly connecting during challenging moments.  Our first meeting will be March 2nd at 7:45 in the cafeteria.  Subsequent meeting dates are 3/23, 4/6, 4/18, 5/4, and 5/18.  CLICK HERE to sign up to participate!

Adam Loewy is one of the top personal injury lawyers in Austin. He is a proud graduate of the University of Texas School of Law and started his law firm in 2005. Adam helps people who have been injured in car crashes, slip and falls, dog bites, and other assorted ways. He is actively involved in every case he handles and is always available to talk or text. He lives and works in Northwest Hills and loves helping local schools. If you or a loved one has been injured, call the Loewy Law Firm today at (512) 280-0800.

Dear Hill Community, 

We were excited to end the week with 0 confirmed COVID cases on Wednesday or Thursday. Dillo Cheer! While our cases in the district dropped by 58% this week from the prior week, numbers of cases were still very high. We will continue with our layered safety measures on campus. Thank you all again for the support that helped us get through a very difficult month together!

This Thursday, February 17th at 7:45 am we look forward to welcoming Board Trustee Kristin Ashy to Hill school for our next Principal Check-In. Her updates are always full of great information. We will plan to hold this meeting in our Hill library. We look forward to seeing our interested parents/guardians there.

We are pleased to announce that after several postponements, we will be moving forward with our Hill Modernization Grand Opening event on March 1st at 9:00 am. This will be a celebration of how the recent bond work has transformed and prepared our campus for the future. You can click here to view the invitations for the event in English and Spanish. This celebration is not open to the public on campus as we want to ensure it is a safe event. We do hope you can view the fun online, though!

Please mark your calendar for Spring Picture Day on March 9th! Click here for an online flier with a bit of information. More will come out in the near future for those interested families.

To wrap up, here is a friendly reminder on our No Drama Discipline Book Club for parents/guardians. We also want to wrap-up with a huge celebration and thank you from our Book Fair. It was a massive success that will go a long way to supporting literacy on campus. We are also pleased to announce that over $6,000 was raised for the library of our sister-school Graham Elementary in AISD. This is incredible and another example of how special and supportive this community is! Have an excellent night, everyone.

Principal Drummond

Thank you Hill community for an amazing Book Fair “week.” It was so fun seeing the kids shop and enjoy the fair after having to cancel it last year. We hope everyone is loving their new books! We want to recognize and give a GREAT BIG DILLO CHEER for Melanie Petersen, Book Fair Chair Extraordinaire! Heading up Book Fair is a big job any given year, but especially this year with a pandemic surge AND weather closings. This is such a special event for our Dillos and we are appreciative of Melanie’s excitement and execution in making it run so smoothly!  

Our Total Sales for the fair were $28,119.24. WOW! As a school, we raised $6,396.10 for our sister school, Graham Elementary. AMAZING! The winners of the contest were Mrs. Shah’s 1st Grade class (from K-2) and Ms. Bostick’s 3rd grade class (from 3-5). These two classes shopped the fair and picked some great books for Graham’s library. With the remaining funds raised, Graham will get to shop for books for their school. Also, congratulations to the overall grade level winners, 2nd grade (from K-2) and 3rd grade (from 3-5). Thank you to all who contributed!

From Melanie: “Thank you to all of our amazing volunteers! We could not have done it without you. Thank you to Amy Whiteaker, Andrea Maybury, Aubree Friesenhahn, Beth Domel, Boyoung Huh, Casey Fisher, Cassie Fillman, Courtney Lizmi, Courtney Scalo, Donna Campbell, Erica Butler, Erin Drew, Erin Hanson, Esther Houari, Felecitee De Hoyos, Ira Sutedja, Jamie Schroeder, Jenny de la Rosa, Jessica McKay, Jessie Rupert, Julie Neitzel, Katie Hanley, Kristen Trout, Margarita Bagwell, Peyton Cummings, Rebecca Neubauer, Ruhi Bell, Ruth Dew, Sally Schwarz, Sandy Hong, Snigdha Katragadda and our DIllo Dads – Doug, Ben, George, Jason, Justin, KC, & Rey. Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!”

Austin ISD’s Youth Art Month celebration is coming up next month, and THREE Hill Dillos were winners in the annual T-shirt design contest!  Congratulations to 5th grader Mary Hammond who created the first place, winning design pictured below!  Congratulations as well to 4th grader Isabel Lizmi who placed second, and 5th grader Yuval Sela who placed third!  We are impressed by, and proud of, all of our talented artists who participated.

The Hill Caring and Sharing Committee, chaired by Caroline Marquis, Haley Meyer, and Liz Neff, invites you to SHARE THE LOVE benefitting HopeAustin food pantry during our February Food Drive.  We are asking each class to collect individual microwavable cups of mac & cheese and/or canned pasta (ex: spaghetti & meatballs). The class with the MOST items collected will win an EXTRA RECESS!  Collection ends tomorrow, Monday, February 14th.  Contact Jessica Timpson, Hill UT Social Work Intern, at timpsj@utexas.edu with any questions.

Hill Country Carnival is back on Friday, March 4th! Everyone’s favorite event is back, including the famous Hill Haunted House. But it can’t happen without you! Your child’s class has been assigned a Carnival booth. So keep an eye out for the email from your homeroom parent and sign up today!

New this year – we’ll have local food trucks in our “Carnival Food Truck Park” so plan for dinner and of course some sweet treats. We can hardly wait for the inaugural running of the armadillos!!

There will be live armadillo racing and photo opps throughout Carnival so make sure you don’t miss out on this dillo-rific opportunity. Keep an eye out in Dillo Details for more details including wristband sales for all-the-fun-you-can-fit unlimited games and rides. Wristband sales start Tuesday! So stay tuned! For questions and more info email Kelly Tarun, Carnival Chair, at carnival@hillelementary.com.