About Our School
Hillcrest Primary School is a newly constructed, LEED Gold certified, building serving the Shawano community. Hillcrest was specifically designed to educate our youngest learners in Early Childhood through 2nd grade. Our current enrollment is 648 students. Hillcrest is a Student Achievement Guarantee in Education (SAGE) school. Because of this, we have class sizes of 18 or less in Kindergarten through 2nd grade. Hillcrest’s colors are red and black with a hawk for a mascot.
At Hillcrest, our staff is dedicated to providing a high quality education. Our motto is “Committed to Excellence”. We currently employ 100 professional and support staff who help meet the educational needs of our students. We differentiate instruction to maximize learning. Our staff monitors student progress using the Measure of Academic Progress (MAP) assessment, Fountas and Pinnell Benchmark Assessment System and Standardized Writing Assessment.
If our students need additional support, we offer Title I Reading and Math, Reading Recovery, Title VII Tutoring, English Language Learner support, as well as, Special Needs Education.
We use the following programs; FOSS Science, Everyday Math, Nystrom Hand On Social Studies Program, and the Comprehensive Literacy Model to meet the district and state benchmarks and standards. We are in the process of matching our curriculums to the Common Core State Standards.
Students who attend Hillcrest are exposed to technology which supports their learning. We have two computer labs each with 30 computers, a laser printer and a color printer. We have 17 laptops in the library for the students and staff to use. We have wireless Internet access throughout the building. We currently have about 10 classrooms that have been equipped with what our school district refers to as DISC (DISC stands for Differentiated Instruction for Students using Computers). Each DISC classroom has 10 laptops, a projector, projector screen, ELMO, printer, scanner, digital camera, Lightspeed voice amplification system, and DVD/VCR player. We plan to add DISC to a few classrooms each year until every classroom has it. Every teacher takes two district provided trainings to learn how to differentiate instruction with this technology before DISC is installed in their classrooms.
We use Positive Behavior Intervention System or (PBIS) for our school wide discipline program. With PBIS, we can monitor student behaviors and use the data to make specific improvements to our school wide discipline plan or an individual discipline plan as needed. We do encourage and reward positive decision making in our students. We have different colored BEAK (Be Excellent Awesome Kids) awards. White BEAK awards are for general positive decision making. Gold BEAK awards are for doing something extra special to make Hillcrest a better place. Red Beak awards are entire classroom awards that focus on targeted behaviors. We hold weekly raffles to win prizes for the three different BEAK awards.
We believe that there is simply NOTHING more important than a great education for our area children. Our teachers have the latest teaching and technology skills, but more importantly, care about your kids. As the principal of Hillcrest Primary, I will tell you I understand the importance of providing not only quality teachers but the cutting edge technology to better assist your children as they move forward in this complex world we live in.
Teaching our area children is a process, not a timeline, and we want the Shawano Area School District children to not only survive but thrive when the world calls them.
Hillcrest Primary is located at 1410 South Waukechon Street, Shawano, Wisconsin 54166.
