Longtime Hillside School Principal Will Retire in 2014

It will be a long goodbye for Hillside School principal Teresa Pennington.

On Tuesday the Bridgewater-Raritan Board of Education accepted the retirement of Pennington, effective Aug. 1, 2014.

“We wish her well,” said Schlider, who is retiring next month.

Pennington came to Bridgewater-Raritan after serving five years as an administrator in the Flemington-Raritan district. Before that she was employed as an educator in New York City, Superintendent of Schools Michael Schlider said.

Pennington was appointed principal at Hillside in September 1995 when it was converted into an intermediate school for grades 4-6 when Bridgewater-Raritan High School East was converted into a middle school.

Hillside remained an intermediate school housing grades 4 and 5, until September, 2006, when it was converted to a Grade 5 and 6 school. With this conversion came a new three-story addition that included project/science rooms, small group rooms, music rooms, a computer lab and an auxiliary gym.

Hillside is nationally recognized for its innovative environmental education programs created by teacher Katrina Macht. One of the highlights of Pennington’s tenure came in 2001 when primatologist and humanitarian Jane Goodall visited Hillside school to attend the school’s annual Forest Fest. 

Goodall returned to the school in 2004 to designate it not only as the first elementary school in the United States to have the distinction of being a Roots & Shoots School, a program of the Goodall Institute that promotes children assuming an active role in environmental causes.