First Day of School: What's New in the North Hills School District

The following information was provided by North Hills School District Communications Coordinator Amanda Hartle.

The first day of school in North Hills School District is Tuesday, August 27, and the estimated enrollment is more than 4,300 students. 

1. Autism Sensory Room for Elementary Students

North Hills elementary special education students enrolled in the district’s autistic support program will benefit from a new sensory room. Constructed at Ross Elementary School, the room provides a multi-sensory environment for students who require and benefit from sensory stimulation to enhance their learning, facilitate their therapy and improve their quality of life. The room will be able to be used as a calming environment, stimulating environment or a combination of both for students who require it. The room will be equipped with a fiber optic waterfall, bubble wall, trampoline, body rocker and space maze UV area rug among other items.

2. Welding Program

North Hills students will take part in a groundbreaking welding partnership between the district and the Community College of Allegheny County. This school year, North Hills High School’s Technology Education Department will offer tuition-free welding courses as a College in High School option. A dozen students are expected to be part of the first high school welding partnership in the area. The three, three-credit courses will be offered to sophomores, juniors and seniors. The easily-transferred credits will allow students to join the highly in-demand CCAC welding certification program upon graduation with half of the credits required for program completion at no cost to the student.

3. Handwriting Without Tears

At the elementary level, kindergarten, first-grade and second-grade students will learn from a new handwriting curriculum. The implementation of Handwriting Without Tears printing and cursive programs represent North Hills’ commitment to keep handwriting in the district’s curriculum when many schools across the nation are eliminating handwriting programs. The new curriculum offers unique strategies that incorporate hands-on activities and multi-sensory strategies to build good handwriting habits early while learning printing and cursive skills. The curriculum will be rolled out to third and fourth-grade students in the 2014-15 school year. 

4. Middle School Activities Period

North Hills Middle School seventh and eighth-grade students will take advantage of a new daily activities period at the end of the school day. The half-hour period will cultivate greater academic enrichment and allow students to pursue activities and clubs such as fitness club, service club and childcare club among others, specialized STEAM-based instruction, tutoring and mentoring programs partnering with high school students. The activities period is possible due to the new arrival and dismissal schedules implemented this school year. 

5. New Courses

North Hills High School students will be offered four new College in High School courses - nutrition, welding, French I and Latin I. The district now offers 12 College in High School courses that allow North Hills’ teachers to work with local universities in a partnership to offer college-level courses. The courses provide high school students the opportunity to earn college credits and receive a grade on a university transcript for courses successfully completed at North Hills High School. In many cases, students may transfer these credits to other universities. 

6. Curriculum Additions

At the elementary level, a new elementary math curriculum called Math in Focus will be implemented in fourth, fifth and sixth-grades. The new curriculum uses a highly visual and topic-intensive approach to teach math concepts. The implementation follows a multi-year pilot program that saw the curriculum’s institution into lower elementary grades in the 2012-13 school year.

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