Zach Vorst - Hilliard City School Board

There's not much to report on regarding the last 6 weeks of Board activity. Our construction projects are moving along, Melissa Swearingen won the state's Meritorious Budget award, we announced our latest Embrace, Empower, and Inspire award winners (congrats Chelsey Steiner, Dave Carter, Jerry Drobnick, Doug Saunders, Alex Francis, Steve Schaeffer, Jamie McClary, Theresa Mummert, Adam Story, and Chris Lewis!), we approved some policy updates, and had two great presentations from our kids at the Preschool and Avery Elementary!

That's a wrap! This month marks my last as a member of the Hilliard Board. Thank you to everyone who has been a supporter! It's been an honor to serve our community in this seat, and I'm eternally grateful to everyone who has helped me and engaged along the way. I wish everyone the best!
Here's a copy of my outgoing statement from our last Board meeting:

I want to start by offering some thank yous. David, thanks for always answering my questions and engaging in thoughtful discussions. I appreciate how truly hard you work!, Melissa, I see your hiring as one of the best decisions we have made. We are lucky to have you! Rich Boettner, thank you for ensuring I was connected and kept in the loop while I was mobilized during my first few months on the Board. Mark Tremayne, you're a difference maker for us! Thanks for your innovation and for finding new ways to help our students find their future! Thanks to the principals who’ve engaged, parents and supporters, and every one of our team members. Finally, to my dear friend Beth Murdoch, thanks for always lending an ear and having my back and telling me when an idea was dumb before I ever said it in public! I’m grateful for all of you and you will continue to serve our community well!

As a group, I’m proud of all of our accomplishments, both when it was easy and when it was hard. No secret that I’m here because of the hybrid mode debacle. Please everyone do what it takes for our kids to win! For everyone in a leadership role, I ask you to engage members of the community, both when it’s easy and when it’s not. Please don’t be guided by what is convenient, popular, or by just following what everyone else is doing. Don’t let societal or cultural trends guide your decisions. Go boldly in the direction of academic success, safety, and responsibility! Continue to make our schools a place we are proud of! It’s been an honor to sit in the people’s chair, and I wish you all the best.

Thank you to everyone who has followed this page! If I can ever help any of you please don't hesitate to direct message me. Merry Christmas to everyone!
-Zach

A special thanks to everyone who helped stuff the bus for our local toy drive!

Here's what's been going on with the Hilliard BOE in October:
October 6- We had our monthly meeting at The Hub. We started with a presentation from a few of our Hub programs (Academy Vibe, NextGen Changemakers, and Academy EDU). Sometimes you only hear snippets of what goes on in these types of programs, so it was wonderful to meet and hear from the kids and team members who participate in them! These kids are doing things in school that are new, creative, and innovative. A big thank you to those kids and their teachers for sharing their stories! Next, we heard from our perfect ACT score recipient and the list of National Merit semi-finalists and Commended Scholars. Recognizing these kids is my favorite meeting of the year! It's an incredible feat to have a perfect ACT score, and a huge congratulations to Rohan Narisetti from Darby! National Merit semi-finalists (top 16,000 students nationally) and Commended Scholars (top 34,000 students nationally) are designations earned by students who score highly on the PSAT. Academic success is something we strive for and seeing these students' (and their parents'!) hard work pay off is truly awesome! Then we celebrated our Embrace, Empower, and Inspire award winners (congrats Jeff Haug and Ann Jadischke!) and had a presentation on our updated five year forecast with Melissa (see link below). We followed with our routines, public participation, and approval of personnel actions and trip requests. We then went into authorizing an easement and approving our participation in a bus/van purchasing cooperative for the district. School busses last about ten years, and we are part of this cooperative to get better deals on purchases when those old busses have to be retired. After that we approved the next three years of school calendars and selected our third party administrator (Omni & TSACG) for compliance services for the district's 403(B) and 457(B) plans. We closed with approval of the five year forecast, an update to our appropriations, and committee reports.
October 10- I attended the City/School Board/Township meeting at the new Norwich Township Firehouse. This meeting is held to update the different bodies on what is happening in their respective groups. We heard about the township hiring more firefighter/EMTs, the growth of The Well (hoping for 6,000 members soon), and development happening in Brown Township. The highlight of the morning was the tour of the new firehouse. These folks have thought of everything, and the facility if very well done!
October 27- We had our monthly work session at Central Office. The highlight was our construction update regarding the new projects around our district. See slides from that presentation below. We followed with an amendment to our 403(B) and 457(B) plans, authorizing an agreement with a commissioning consultant, and the first read of several policy updates.
That's all for this month. If you'd like to discuss anything further please email me at [email protected]. Thank you all!

www.hilliardschools.org

Today I was invited to the Club America (a group affiliated with Turning Point USA) meeting at Davidson HS! It’s the National Day of Remembrance for Charlie Kirk, and Beth Murdoch and I got to hear from some members of our community what Charlie meant to them. The ideals of faith, freedom, and open dialogue are so important to our nation. It was great to hear how members of our community will carry that legacy forward!

Our kids are learning real life computer science skills!

Thank you girls! We are proud of you!

We got some good news for you all this Monday. Join us in giving a huge thank you to Girl Scout Troop 6795 from Hoffman Trails Elementary! 👭💚

This amazing troop hosted a food drive in the Hoffman Farms community and collected 167 pounds of food along with $130 in donations.🥫💛

We’re so grateful for their generosity. Thank you, Troop 6795, for helping keep our shelves stocked. It takes a village, and we are so glad you are part of this one.

That’s awesome! Congrats Ryan!

Here's what's been going on with the Hilliard BOE in September:

September 8- We had our monthly meeting at Britton Elementary. We started with a presentation from the team and students at Britton about their PBIS (Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports) program. This program encourages and rewards positive interactions between everyone in the building. The kids talked about the rewards they earned while developing an understanding about why their actions matter. The building leadership talked about the behavioral and academic progress that they attributed to the PBIS program. Thanks to everyone at Britton for taking this project on! We followed with our routines and public participation. We then approved a few more summer graduates along with the Gifted Identification Plan. This plan sets parameters for identifying gifted students and the process for administering the testing used to identify those students. We then approved the contract for a cooling tower project to Waibel Energy Systems. We closed with committee reports prior to adjournment.

September 22- We had our business meeting at Central Office. We had a brief update on the new elementary going up next to Memorial Middle School. The government-related approval processes are continuing on. This is not unexpected and we will have further updates when more information is available. For further updates on construction projects around the district check out the MFP page on our district website. We then had a presentation about our recent district report card results. Our district scored a 4/5 stars overall. We earned a 5 star rating in overall progress and gap closing, 4 stars in achievement, and 3 stars in early literacy and graduation rate. For the 3rd year in a row we earned the #1 rating in all of Ohio for the value-added component on the state report card! Thanks to all of our team for making that happen again! We are down to 12.8% of our students being chronically absent, with the previous year being 13.9%. See the pictures below from that presentation. We then approved a measure about campaign material before adjournment.

The picture here is from the Darby-Davidson game. It's always great to see our student-athletes and band members come together and perform!

That's all for this month. If you have further questions please don't hesitate to reach out at [email protected].

I’m so proud of our students for stepping into action!

Central Ohio students step in to help after semi crash on I-70 Students from Tolles Career and Technical Center jumped into action after witnessing a crash, applying training to assist the driver until first responders arrived.

Congratulations Melissa! We are so lucky to have you!

We are proud to announce that Hilliard City Schools has received the prestigious 2025–2026 Meritorious Budget Award (MBA) from the Association of School Business Officials International (ASBO)!

This award recognizes our district’s commitment to strong fiscal management and transparent budget practices, ensuring that resources are used responsibly to support student success.

Thank you to all of our staff and leadership team for their dedication to excellence in school business operations.

Here's what's been going on with the Hilliard BOE in August:

August 11- We had our regular monthly Board meeting at Central Office. We had a great update on our financial situation from our Treasurer, Melissa Swearingen. See slides from that presentation below. We should end this FY with a slight excess of revenues under expenditures (about 2.5%) for the FY. We have received an increase in interest income and in unrestricted grants-in-aid. We should get information in the coming months about costs regarding insurance for our team members and possible changes in federal funding. Overall we remain in a very stable financial state. We followed with our routines and then approved a project to upgrade the lighting in our three high school stadiums. This $900,000 project will improve the lighting and provide us with energy efficiency for years to come. We then presented committee reports before a second read of some policy updates and adjourning.

August 15- We had Induction at Darby HS. Induction is a kickoff party to start the year that typically happens on the Friday before school starts. Special thanks to the crew at Darby for making it happen! Our speakers were great and we had an awesome start to the school year!

August 20- School started! I hope everyone had a great first few days of school!

August 25- We had our work session at Central Office. We started with routines and approval of some policy updates. The highlight of the meeting was an update on our construction projects from over the summer. We are excited for the playground updates at Avery, Britton, Crossing, Horizon, Reason, and Norwich Elementaries. New secured entrances are completed/underway at our three high schools, along with Tharp, Weaver, and Heritage. Finally, the Darby weightroom project is moving along and we plan for it to be done later this fall. See pictures and other information at Hilliardschools.org/mfp

August 25- I also attended the outdoor volleyball game between Darby and Bradley. This was an incredible event (picture below) and I hope we do this again! Thanks to all the team members who made this happen!

As school starts I hope the fellow parents out there will discuss the new cell phone policy with their kids. We respect the fact that many students have devices. Our district policy is for students (unless they have an exception) in grades K-6 to have their phones only out at the very beginning of the day and at the very end of the day. Grade 7-12 students are able to have their devices out between classes and at lunch. Our team has full authority regarding enforcement of these standards. I hope parents talk about these expectations with their children to ensure we create the best learning environment possible for everyone!

That's all for now. If you want to discuss anything further please email me at [email protected].
Thanks!

Happy first day preschoolers!!

Welcome back everyone! I hope you all had a great day!!