When it opened in 1955, Hillsdale High School was awarded the School Design Award from the American Institute of Architects. It served as the prototype for Bay Area high schools, with indoor/outdoor passages, landscaped courtyards, and skylights in classrooms. The design is credited to John Lyon Reid. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, teachers Greg Jouriles and Sue Bedford developed and implemented an integrated humanities curriculum, scheduling social studies and English classes back-to-back. The extended periods were first rolled out to first-year honors students in 1989, followed by a parallel program implemented by Christine Del Gaudio and Marty Kongsle for the remaining first-year students in 1992. 1994 marked the start of the annual Battle at Dawn, a re-enactment of the Battle of Neuve Chapelle for first-year students at HHS as part of their studies about World War I. In 1996, HHS proposed implementing a senior exhibition as a graduation requirement to pass fourth-year English classes. Students would have to defend a fifteen-page thesis before a three-member panel for their senior exhibition, which drew attention from parents concerned their children would not pass. The senior exhibition requirement was implemented in 1997, and the review of multiple drafts added a substantial load to teachers' grading burden, including one-on-one assistance and mentoring. As a result, a tutorial period was added to the teachers' schedules in 1999, and the English, social studies, and math teachers collaborated to create the Reflective, Eager, Aspiring, Learning Masters program to help personalize instruction. Jeff Gilbert left HHS in 2001 to join the Stanford Teacher Education Program, introducing the two schools, and Stanford faculty entered into a Professional Development School relationship with HHS in the fall of 2001. In the early 2000s, HHS won multiple grants to transform school culture into small learning communities, an approach championed by Linda Darling-Hammond, who had introduced HHS faculty to the concept during a professional development day in January 2002. The planning for SLCs at HHS was funded by a spring 2002 federal grant which culminated in Coyote Point Day, a two-day discussion and planning session held offsite at Coyote Point Park in November 2002. Under the SLC model, incoming first-year students at HHS are divided into four houses, named for important medieval centers of learning; each house has approximately 100 students, who stay with a common set of teachers covering math, English, social science, and science for two years.
Campus
SMUHSD residents approved Measure D in 2000 and Measure M in 2006, which directly funded the repair and modernization of District schools, including Hillsdale.
Statistics
Demographics
2017-2018 1,534 students: 816 male, 718 female
White
Hispanic
Asian
Two or More Races
Pacific Islander
African American
American Indian
584
467
313
140
8
18
4
%
%
%
%
%
%
%
Approximately 21.9% of the students at Hillsdale are served by the free or reduced-price lunch program.
