About Us

Vision

Prospect Hill is a community whose members are always learning and growing. We set high standards for ourselves and challenge each other to achieve our best. We believe in working hard at everything we do, sharing our knowledge and skills for our own and the community’s good. We are a caring community where everyone is treated with fairness, kindness, and respect. Each member of our community is valued for his or her own unique abilities, efforts, and contributions. We recognize that learning involves struggle and taking risks, and we support and encourage each other’s progress. We envision Prospect Hill as a community that produces joyful, independent and life-long learners; and adaptable, productive compassionate human beings.

Commitments

At Prospect Hill:

We commit to creating a school environment in which children are encouraged to persist and to work hard and where they are comfortable taking the risks necessary to learning.
We commit to making whatever accommodations and modifications are necessary in order to assist students to reach their academic and social potential. We feel a particular responsibility to illuminate the strengths we see in each child and to build upon those strengths.
We commit to providing a strong system of communication that will connect our district, school, classroom and home communities. Good communication implies good listening in which we try hard to understand and empathize with the perspectives and experiences of others.
We commit to demonstrating to our students, that we too, are on a journey of learning that extends beyond formal education, and that we share with them the triumphs, joys and difficulties such a journey entails.

Hail Prospect Hill (School song)

Words and Music by Linda Carlson and Eric Katz

Way up on a hill there's a place that is dear, Where friendships abound and grow year after year. We work hard and reach high, and show others we care, At my school Prospect Hill! Oh, Prospect Hill, the lion roars our reputation, For we learn and we know, we think and we grow, At my school Prospect Hill. Hail Prospect Hill, the root of my strong education. For we learn and we know, we think and we grow, Hail my school, Prospect Hill!

History

A black and white photo showing the main entrance of Prospect Hill with a tree in the foreground — The cherry trees which grace Prospect Hill
each spring were a gift of gratitude from the
family of a Japanese boy who had completed
kindergarten at Prospect Hill but was compelled
to return to his homeland with his mother on the
eve of World War II. Ten cherry trees were presented
to the school in October 1941 in appreciation of the
kindness that many people from Pelham had shown to this child.

In 1879, as population grew, the Board of Education was authorized to construct a “suitable building” on Jackson Avenue to cost not more than $4,000. Although originally met with disapproval, Mrs. Robert C. Black organized the women of the town behind the measure. They may have not been able to vote, but they cast their support at the district meeting and the measure passed.

The Jackson Avenue School was a two-storied, red brick building which stood on the northeast corner of Jackson Avenue and Plymouth Street. The school served the community well until the late 1920s, when “boom” days south of Boston Post Road resulted in the approval of a $398,000 bond to build a modern educational building on the property bound by Washington and Clay Avenues near Hudson Street. Not far from the site of Pelham’s first schoolhouse, it was named the Prospect Hill School in its honor. It was dedicated in October 1930 as a “memorial to the sturdy school children of the early Pelhams and as an inspiration to the youngsters of today.”

A black and white photo of the Prospect Hill stage and auditorium. — The Prospect Hill Auditorium. When the school was first
built, officials recognized that a past practice of combining
the gymnasium and auditorium “was not advantageous.”

“I know of no one better,” said Superintendent Brown of the new school.

Its outstanding features included: “telephones in every room connected with a central switchboard; a Stromberg/Carlson Radio System complete with magnetic speakers and electric phonographs for use in the auditorium and gym which broadcast music appreciation and current historical events as they occurred; a large, airy gymnasium with separate boys’ and girls’ showers and locker rooms nearby; graduated and movable desks and chairs; suitably placed blackboards of the increasing height of the pupils; concealed clothes closets with a provision for a current of warm air to dry wet clothes on a rainy day; accessible fire hose throughout the building; drinking fountains; clinics and consultation rooms; a 700- volume library in the almost cloistered-like atmosphere of the third floor; a large kindergarten room on the main floor; and a dental and health clinic.”