At a glance
Hudson City School District's new superintendent, Todd Hilgendorff, answered questions submitted by residents, parents, students and staff in three short videos posted between August 31 and September 4. The most consequential answer: the elementary school and the junior high school are both identified by New York State as Targeted Support and Improvement schools, meaning some district data falls short of state standards, and improvement plans written last spring are posted on the district website. He also walked through three facilities programs under way across the campus (a capital project, an energy performance contract and a Smart Schools Bond Act project), a greenhouse due in September, and, with executive director Cheryl Rabinowitz, the district's new AI policy and plan and a cybersecurity push that includes phishing drills for students. This is not a meeting and nothing was voted on; it is the superintendent speaking to the district on the record.
Episode 1: Mr. H Introduces Himself
The first episode opens with personal questions from the district's Ask the Superintendent submissions.
Key points
- He is fine with Mr. Hilgendorff, but his first-year students more than 20 years ago named him Mr. H, and he is happy to go by that.
- He and his husband, Steve, have a dog named Gus, a Chihuahua Dachshund over 17 years old.
- He thanked community members, parents, students, faculty and staff who submitted questions, and said the questions were clustered into themes, one per episode.
Episode 1 had no YouTube captions and was transcribed from audio, which renders the superintendent as "Hilgendorf." The district's website spells it Hilgendorff.
Vision: Not One Person's, a Shared One
Asked what his vision for the district is, the superintendent said vision should not come from one individual.
Key points
- His first-year focus is a shared decision-making plan that pulls together parents, community, family, students, faculty and staff.
- That group would then create a shared vision covering curriculum, instruction, assessment practices, and the school environment.
- He said to look over the next year for opportunities to get involved, first in the plan and then on the team that defines the vision.
Two Schools Identified for Targeted Support and Improvement
The superintendent explained the district's status under New York State's accountability system.
Key points
- The elementary school and the junior high school are each identified as a Targeted Support and Improvement school. In his words, that means some of the district's data is not up to the standards New York State requires, so the schools are identified as in need of improvement.
- Last spring, teams from both schools reviewed data and picked areas to work on this school year. Those plans, called school comprehensive education plans, are on the district website, and he encouraged residents to read them.
- Common themes in the plans are curriculum alignment and creating student connections.
- He framed it as continuous school improvement: use data to identify strengths and challenges, then decide what to work on so the school keeps moving forward for all students.
The episode does not say which data fell short, when the identification was made, or what it takes to exit the designation.
Episode 2: Roofs, Boilers, Cameras and a Greenhouse
After two student questions (his favorite subjects were math and science, and he was in the high school musical every year), the superintendent sorted the construction people have noticed across the campus into three programs.
Key points
- The capital project improves facilities across the campus. The roof work at the elementary school is part of it, and this fall it moves to the auditorium: new seating, carpeting and theatrical lighting along the floor.
- The energy performance contract replaces lighting throughout the district and, this summer, updated the boilers at the junior senior high school. He said it is meant to help both finances and the environment.
- The Smart Schools Bond Act project covers safety and connectivity: a new phone system, Wi-Fi across the district, and security cameras in different locations.
- Separately, the long-running greenhouse project reaches delivery in September, with installation shortly after; he hopes it stands behind the junior senior high school by October.
- A new facilities page is coming to the district website, with updates also in the newsletters. He did not give dollar figures for any of the projects.
Episode 3: Meeting the Superintendent in Person
The final episode opens with a question from a staff member and one from several community members.
Key points
- Asked what a colleague once said that stuck with him, he described staff at his previous district telling him, when he left last spring, that they felt supported and pushed to grow. He said that is the environment he wants to build here.
- Asked whether there will be chances to meet him, he said he has been going to community events over the summer and will keep going, and that he will be at the September open houses or meet-the-teacher events at both schools, with dates to be announced.
- He closed the series by pointing residents to the district's Facebook page, its website, and newsletters starting in the fall, and said the district has lots of potential to do great things in the 2026-27 school year.
The captions say monthly, then carry a bracketed correction to biweekly. The page leaves the cadence out.
How the District Is Using AI
Cheryl Rabinowitz, the district's executive director of curriculum, instruction and technology, joined to answer a question about AI in the schools.
Key points
- Last year a technology committee of students, staff, parents and community members met regularly and wrote an AI policy over a couple of months, drawing on samples from other districts. It went out for district input, then to the board, the district attorney and the superintendent at the time.
- The same group then wrote an AI plan: what students can use, what staff can use, and when. Every program had to be compatible with New York State Education Law 2-D, which she explained as protecting student data; some AI programs meet that bar and some do not, and the plan lists the ones that do.
- This year the instructional technology facilitator will run lessons and activities in classrooms so students can use AI, with more professional development for staff.
- The plan can be downloaded from the curriculum, instruction and technology section of the district website.
Cybersecurity: Phishing Drills and a State Grant
A second technology question asked how the district protects staff and students from cyber threats.
Key points
- Rabinowitz said the district has spent the last few years securing its network, but training matters as much. This year it is using a program called Cyber IQ for elementary, middle and high school students as well as faculty and staff. It sends simulated phishing messages, such as a fake contest, to teach people not to click in the real world.
- Staff training previously ran through a program called CyberNut for two years; this is the first year phishing training rolls out to students.
- The district received a New York State grant, which she said came through the governor's office from Homeland Security, to add multifactor authentication: each staff member will get a token as an extra step when logging in. Students will not carry tokens; staff will, because they handle student data.
- The superintendent thanked her for her leadership and said AI and cybersecurity are part of the world students are in now.
No dollar amount was given for the grant.
About this page
FUTURE HUDSON is an experiment in civic engagement: every public meeting of the City of Hudson since January 2026, transcribed and made readable, so any resident can follow what the city is deciding without attending every meeting. This page covers one meeting; see the full archive.
How it was made
The meeting video was transcribed automatically; the transcript was then organized into sections and summarized. The raw transcript is above, every claim can be checked against it.
What to be skeptical of
The transcript is automated and contains speech-recognition errors; names and numbers may be wrong. This page has not been reviewed by a human. Nothing here is an official record, the school district's official minutes are authoritative.
About coverage of this body
Board of Education meetings are livestreamed by the Hudson City School District to its own YouTube channel. The school district is a separate government from the City of Hudson. If a meeting is missing from the archive, the recording was likely not posted. See the archive index for the full coverage note.