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Beaverton Schools

History

HITEON HISTORY

 Before 1905 there were not more than 20 houses in what was to become the Hiteon School District.  Children from the Hiteon area attended the little one-room school in the McKay District before that area was divided into Hiteon, Garden Home and McKay districts.

The name “Hiteon” (pronounced “hi-ton”) is derived from Hite, a family name of one of the original settlers in the Beaverton area.  Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Hite settled with their family in 1880 on Scholls Ferry Road at the corner of what is now 125th Avenue.  Their son, Ernest D. Hite, lived on the same property until his death in 1962.  He served on the Hiteon School Board for many years.  Neighbors of Ernest D. Hite suggested the name for their new school in 1911.

On January 9, 1975, Hiteon School opened its doors at the current location on SW Brockman Road.  At that time there were 327 students, a staff of 16 teachers, 1 secretary and 1 aide.  Although the building was not quite finished, everyone was eager to be together under one roof after four months of sharing space with Cooper Mountain and Chehalem Schools.  The school consisted of 12 classrooms and a library in one area while the gym; music room, office and cafeteria were along an extended hallway.  Three years later in 1978, enrollment had increased to 481 students.  Six new classrooms were added to the southwest end of the building.  In 1986, another addition of four classrooms and a computer center was completed.  In 2008 the most current addition began.  All classrooms received permanent walls, the bathrooms and cafeteria were updated and a new wing was added that includes 10 new classrooms and a resource center. 

Jim Beach served as the first principal in the new building until his retirement in 1984.  He was followed by Bob Blanchard (1984-1993), Mary Smith (1993-1994), Deborah Wintermute (1994-2000), Patricia Sharp (2000-2004), Linda Schattauer (2004-2009), Ginny Hansmann (2009-2014), Meghan Warren (2014-2022) followed by Janet Maza who is the current principal along with Jenny Read-Emslie who is the current Assistant Principal. Hiteon has an enrollment of 500+ students.

Over the last several years, our community partnerships and community involvement have dwindled.  This is in part, due to the pandemic.  Our focus this year is to bring back the volunteers and community partnerships to better enrich the Hiteon experience for our students. By mid-October, our Parent Teacher Club had already had several events to bring the community back to Hiteon!

Every year we work to improve our practice in closing the achievement gap. In the past, we have had ample data to determine our course of action.  This year, grade-level teachers finished their Independent Reading Level Assessments by mid-October, along with the Easy CBM testing and the Core Phonics Screener.  Writing and math data are also pieces of data we gather to determine what instructional moves we will make as a school to support the academic growth of our students.  When looking at the data, it is clear that our students are needing more opportunities for student talk, higher levels of questioning, and use of academic vocabulary.  Our state testing, Independent Reading Level Assessment, and Easy CBM screener results show that our students need to improve outcomes.  To be clear, Hiteon teachers are up to the challenge and look forward to watching our students’ learning accelerate by identifying practices to improve students' access to and mastery of grade level standards and beyond. 

If you look at the historical demographic data at Hiteon, our English Language Learners and our economically disadvantaged students perform behind other student groups in all subject areas. The pandemic negatively impacted all students’ language abilities, especially our English Language Learners. Additionally, half of our teachers did not feel confident in supporting their English Language Learners, according to the Beaverton School District Survey of staff in the Spring of 2022.  As a result, we will ask the BSD Multilingual Department to do a Sheltered Instruction Needs survey and to provide training for DAL(Developing Academic Language) strategies for our teachers.  It is the belief that the increased focus on our student's language skills, student talk, and the focus on academic vocabulary, and higher-level thinking skills,  will result in higher academic performance. 

We know that the pandemic negatively affected many of our students' social and emotional growth. Our staff is committed to building relationships and increasing the engagement of every student.  Our Behavior, Health, and Wellness team will continue to support individual students and families.  As we see more students experiencing trauma and emotional regulation struggles, it is our hope that our focus on their social and emotional growth will equate to more growth in achievement across all subjects.