Dan Hill
My name is Dan Hill. I am currently the President of the Board of Education at the Westmont Hilltop School District, and I am excited to seek your vote to be next year’s section 6 advisor for the PSBA. I am writing today to explain to you a little bit about who I am, and why I would like to serve the PSBA.
I was born and raised in the Johnstown area, and was proud to return to my hometown in 2007 after spending time in Harrisburg to attend law school, and Pittsburgh to begin my legal career. I practice family law, and I joined my current law firm as a partner in 2010. My career has been spent working with families and their children. Accordingly, education became an important part of my professional life very quickly; and then a part of my personal life when my two children were born not long after my return to Johnstown. My inspiration to become more involved in education was in large part thanks to my wife, who is an extraordinarily dedicated elementary teacher.
I wish to serve as a section advisor for the PSBA because I have experienced first-hand the positive impact that the PSBA’s guiding principles can have on a community. I am a school board director because I believe the biggest way to positively impact a community is through our local schools. My city has been disproportionately affected by loss of economic opportunity and the opioid crisis. Fortunately, despite these challenges, many of our region’s local schools have not only persevered, but invested in improving infrastructure and increasing educational programming opportunities for our children. This has resulted in providing safe havens of opportunity for our local youth that I am convinced will continue to improve the entire region over time.
By becoming a section advisor, I believe I can help other local school boards learn to govern more effectively. I have learned that when school directors act effectively as a team, school administrators can work miracles with limited resources; something that is critical in the current climate of education funding. Serving as a section advisor would provide me the honor of helping to spread this message to many other communities, hopefully creating experiences similar to my own with the PSBA.