I have officially reached my first 90 days working at Hill Country. I can’t believe how quickly time has flown by. This community has warmly welcomed our family. Thank you! We are grateful for the kindness and support we have experienced from this amazing community.

When I joined Hill Country, I set two primary goals for my first 90 days.

My first goal was to immerse myself in the life of the school and gain a deeper understanding of what makes Hill Country unique. This has led to many conversations, meetings, and opportunities to listen and learn, which has been a huge blessing.

My second goal was to establish a set of priorities to guide my first year. While I still have more conversations ahead, both goals are nearly complete, and I am eager to share my top priorities with you in the coming months. In the meantime, I want to highlight two consistent themes from my listening tour that I hope will encourage you.

First, Hill Country has a strong and clear commitment to student discipleship. While no school does this perfectly, I am deeply impressed by the consistency with which our faculty and staff intentionally engage students in their faith journey. We should not overlook this or take it for granted. Building and sustaining a strong culture of student discipleship is hard in any school. It is challenging even in small schools, where you can have tight reins on the culture. Still, it becomes exponentially harder as you grow larger, because maintaining cultural consistency becomes increasingly difficult with the addition of more students and families. Hill Country has done a fabulous job at keeping Christ at the center. I’m honored to be a part of such an institution.

Second, Hill Country Christian School is not without areas for needed improvement. We need more clarity on our core distinctives and to map out and articulate a compelling vision for the future. Many of you have felt this need in recent conversations around campus expansion and growth. I am sorry for these ups and downs, and I promise I am working diligently on a plan and will begin to execute it.

We are also working as a team to create greater clarity around some of the academic challenges we have recently faced. To this end, we need your help. We are launching new Parent Pulse surveys to gather your feedback. Your responses help us better understand how students are learning, what is working well, and where we can improve. Rather than sending one survey a year in the spring, these short pulse surveys will be sent multiple times throughout the school year. Watch for these surveys to begin next week.

This is an exciting and really important time for our school. I am honored to be part of this season in our story and invite you to join me in praying for God’s wisdom, clear guidance, and direction as we take these next steps together.

Grateful to be serving all of you,

Eric DeVries, Head of School