Click here to listen to this week’s JAM – Ready…Set…Applications Open!
We passed a major milestone this week. For the first time in our 87 year history, students can now fill out an application to enroll in our 9th grade. Visit our website – www.hillbrook.org, and you will see that you can go onto Ravenna – an online application space for students applying to independent schools. Once you are on Ravenna, you can start an application and, lo and behold, among the list of possible schools to attend for high school, you will find Hillbrook.
Several months ago, we marked this as an important date on the calendar. To state the obvious, we knew that as of this date we needed to have designed our application. More than that, however, the launch of the application signified that we needed to have created our enrollment management plan. We needed to schedule open houses (check, we have three dates – October 22, November 12, and January 11). We needed to design a series of smaller events for families to learn more about the high school experience (check, we will host a mixture of in-person and Zoom events that introduce families to key people on our team, including our College Counselor and our Athletic Director, help people better understand the amazing opportunity that being a founding student and family represents, and engage people in conversations about what we know is a rigorous and dynamic program unlike any other in this area.) And, we needed to have the basic outline of our Reach Beyond Scholars program in place so that high-achieving students who attend under-resourced elementary schools and often represent the first generation in their families to be college bound know about the opportunity to join our community. (check, mostly, as we have the outlines of the program in place and are in the process of putting together materials to share with families).
As an aside, I am particularly excited about a Q and A session on October 20 with several students who attended Nueva School during their opening years, including Hillbrook alum Alex Nickel and his parents, as I know they will speak powerfully to the unique and compelling opportunity being founding members of the high school represents.
So, it’s a big week for us. Given the early interest in the program we saw this past summer, we are excited to start accepting applications from families who are looking to be part of our high school program. And, of course, we are equally excited about our current students who will have the opportunity to join us through the re-enrollment process, one of the benefits of being part of a JK-12. But that’s a topic for a future episode. Bit by bit, we are laying the foundation.