FROM THE SUPERINTENDENT

GET READY FOR THE START OF SCHOOL!

August 2023

Dear Parents and Guardians, 

On behalf of the Board of Trustees and our staff, we want to extend a warm welcome to the 2023-24 school year! Through the generosity of the Hillsborough community, via the Measure H General Obligation Bond, we have beautiful new projection systems in each of our classrooms, providing state of the art visual technology to support student learning. During this summer, we also painted the exteriors at South and North schools, added new flooring in the South pod classrooms, completed underground and infrastructure work at West and are in process of designing new multipurpose rooms at West and Crocker.  We appreciate the support we receive from our community and our parents - we could not do this important work without you! For monthly updates on our Measure H projects, please visit our website. 

The  start of school this year will be different from the last three years when we were navigating COVID-19. Free COVID-19 test kits will be available for students, staff and families but we will not require any kind of COVID-19 testing results prior to the start of school. We will continue to work with our County Office of Education and the California Department of Public Health following any changing recommendations. We could not be more thankful for the support we received from our community during the pandemic and are grateful to start this year fully focused on teaching and learning. 

Thanks  to our truly incredible HCSD educators, we are nearly ready to welcome back our students and their families. The strong partnership between our parents, educators, and community allow us to offer the very best academic and social emotional programming to our students even during the most challenging times. As always, we will keep you updated with regular communications from both the District and school sites. Please be on the lookout for the Friday Newsletter that comes out every week to all District families. All Friday Newsletters are archived on the HCSD Superintendent’s page on our website and can be accessed here. 

The successful start for this school year is made possible due to our partnerships with our HCSD families, the Hillsborough Schools Foundation, the Associated Parents’ Group, Hillsborough Recreation, the Town of Hillsborough and many more civic and community organizations. Our students’ success should make us proud and confident in a bright future!

Now more than ever, we must ensure that our students are provided high achieving  learning environments which also support social-emotional growth. In developing new initiatives and policies, we always keep our Essential Outcomes at the forefront of our work for our students. More information on our Essential Outcomes can be found on our website at: www.hcsdk8.org. The children of HCSD deserve an excellent education, and along with all our stakeholders, we will continue working together to offer the high-quality education they deserve.

The first day of school is Monday, August 21; please look for specific information from your child’s principal regarding the first day of school schedule. 

If at any time you have questions or concerns regarding your child or any aspect of the school district’s operation, please do not hesitate to give either of us or your child’s principal a call. The phrase “open door policy” is taken to heart in this district, and you will find us all to be very accessible and ready to listen as your partners in education. 

The principals have each prepared a letter that will be sent to parents and guardians. Please be sure to read this communication for more important information, including details about when and how you will receive information about your child’s class placement or class schedule. For our new families, we know this all can be a bit overwhelming - please do not hesitate in reaching out to your site principal or to District Office staff.  We look forward to meeting you at the New Parent Receptions scheduled in September. Please come armed with questions and ready to make lifelong connections!

With deep appreciation,

Dr. Louann Carlomagno, Superintendent

An Huang Chen, HCSD School Board President