About Us

Welcome to SAU #34

Demographics:

The town of Hillsboro is located half way between Concord and Keene in the Monadnock Region of New Hampshire. The school districts in SAU #34 serve about 1,500 students with the goal of providing a quality education for each child. The Hillsboro-Deering Cooperative School District was formed in 1954 and also serves students from the towns of Washington and Windsor. The main campus is located on School Street, just north of the main intersection of Main Street and School Street in Hillsboro, NH.  Washington Elementary School, built in 1992, is located in picturesque Washington, NH just 10 miles northwest of Hillsboro, up route 31.

Forty-nine percent (52%) of the teachers in Hillsboro-Deering schools hold Master's Degrees and fifty-one percent (59%) of teachers in Washington Elementary School have a Master's Degree. Total enrollment in October 2009 was 1,553 students with 281 students identified with special educational needs. The student to teacher ratio is 11.3:1 with an average class size of 19 students. Approximately 61% of our students pursue post high school education upon graduation.

Organization:

We are proud of our 5 schools and the opportunities they offer. We have 2 elementary schools, 1 middle school, 1 high school and 1 alterative high school in west Deering. District-wide, our district is comprised of approximately 96% Anglo-American students and 4% from other various ethnic groups. The entire SAU spans a total of 132.2 square miles, made up of mostly rural areas, and provides transportation to an average of 525 students K-12 per year.  Hillsboro-Deering Elementary School has on average 600 students in grades pre-school through grade 5, while Washington Elementary has an average of 65 students, K-5. Our Middle School (grades 6-8) houses approximately 315 students and we have 500 high school students in grades 9-12.

Each of our schools (with the exception of the Alternative High School) has a full time principal, assistant principal and special education building coordinator to provide leadership and supervision of the educational programs. Additionally, each school provides nursing services and guidance and counseling programs for all students.

The School Administrative Unit (SAU) office is housed on the third floor of the Hillsboro-Deering Elementary School and provides central office services including the Superintendent of Schools, Business Administrator, Student Support Services, Curriculum, Instruction and Assessment, Accounting, Payroll, Human Resources, and Accounts Payable.  

Curriculum:

SAU #34 provides a three-pronged curriculum initiative. These projects are long-term and will guide and inform the work of the district. All three projects are woven together to strengthen our curriculum to help increase student learning and achievement. These are:

• Curriculum Mapping:
  • We have again carried the completed maps forward this year. The plan is to revive the process with a district team and projection maps.
  • The primary focus of current curriculum work is "Reteach and Enrich" with reading and writing power standards at the Elementary School,
  • skills-based and content-integration at the Middle School,
  • and course competencies work at the High School.
  • The list of Power Standards in student friendly language can be accessed through our website.
  • This is in addition to the English Language Arts K-12 Curriculum Binder .
• Curriculum Revision:
  • Work continues on the mathematics curriculum revision and alignment to the New Hampshire Framework.
  • The science curriculum was approved on January 7, 2008 and may be accessed from the CIA website. 
  • Unified Arts teachers (art, music, physical education) have begun work on writing guidelines for K-12 curriculum alignment.
  • Results of the World Languages Task Force may be accessed from the CIA website.

  Understanding by Design (UbD):

• • This model continues to serve as a guide for our district in unit and lesson planning.
  • The primary focus of identifying what students need to know and be able to do and seeking student understanding first, is a model that informs the initiatives at each school.
  • Future instructional lesson design throughout the district is to be based on the identification of essential skills and core understandings using UbD.

Instruction:

District-wide, the focus for professional development has been on supporting teachers new to the district, learning how to mine the wealth of data provided by assessments, furthering district goals, and planning for the improved growth and achievement of each student.

• Ongoing Sessions:
  • Induction with Mentoring
  • New Mentor Training
  • Assessing and mining MAP and NECAP data
  • Science content and inquiry
• Special Sessions:
  • Co-Teaching: special educators and classroom teachers
  • Literacy
  • Science content and inquiry
  • Professional Learning and Data Teams
  • Understanding by Design
  • Integrating Technology
• PD/ERC: The focus of the Professional Development and Late Start/Curriculum Work Days has been on Literacy. As noted above,
  • the Elementary School is focusing on "Reteach and Enrich",
  •  the Middle School is focusing on refining their reorganized model using skills-based and content-integration teams,
  • and the High School is focused on school-wide literacy as well as completing course competencies and assessments.

The district continues to work on building capacity through teacher leaders and drawing on local expertise through mentoring and sessions offered in the June "Teacher Toolbox."

Assessment:

As federal mandates require compliance with the "No Child Left Behind" legislation and Annual Yearly Progress, districts across New Hampshire saw a change in the state assessment program. Hillsboro-Deering has selected the MAP test to look at student instructional levels.

• NECAP (New England Common Assessment Program): This is the fourth year New Hampshire has administered the NECAP. All students in grades three through eight and in grade eleven are tested in October in Reading and Mathematics. Students in grades five, eight, and eleven are tested for Writing.  Science is tested at grades four, eight and eleven in May.
• MAP (Measures of Academic Progress): This is the fifth year that Hillsboro-Deering has used the MAP test for students in grades three through ten.
• More is being done each year with Formative Assessment at all levels. This is assessment done by classroom teachers to check on student mastery and thus inform instruction.
  • Elementary School teachers, with guidance from West-Ed of Learning Innovations, Inc. are developing grade-level Formative Assessments for assuring the mastery of reading and writing skills.
  • Middle School teachers began work last summer and continue to develop common assessments for math and reading.
  • High School teachers are continuing their work on Course Competencies by developing performance assessments to measure proficiency.