The holiday tree inside our school library has come to life! With the help of some helpful little “Eagle Elves,” Media Aide Linda Knapp put up the school’s annual Book Character Holiday Tree, which includes characters from students’ favorite children’s books and movies.

Some featured characters include the Grinch from Dr. Seuss’ “How the Grinch Stole Christmas,” Olaf the Snowman from the Disney animated movie “Frozen,” and Ms. Frizzle from the animated educational show “The Magic School Bus.”

Decorating the tree gave the students an opportunity to get into the holiday spirit while being surrounded by all the books the library has to offer.

To download high resolution jpg files from the photo gallery below, just simply click the “DOWNLOAD” button on the bottom right-hand corner of the photo while viewing it in the Photo Gallery function. We are happy to provide this service to you free of charge. 

Breakfast with Santa is an annual beloved family event sponsored by P-H-M’s Community Education Department held at Bittersweet Elementary. The program is only for children in grades kindergarten through 3^rd grade and all children must be accompanied by an adult. Tickets must be purchased for each person attending.

Breakfast with Santa event

Saturday, Dec. 1

8 a.m., 9:30 a.m., & 11 a.m.

Bittersweet Elementary School

$7 for all tickets

Online ticket sales begin on Thursday, November 1 at 9:00 a.m. Tickets will only be sold online through phm.revtrak.net. We strongly encourage that those wishing to buy tickets go online to phm.revtrak.net prior to Nov. 1 and create their account if they don’t already have one. This will save time and ensure a speedier online checkout. Tickets are online on a first-come, first-served basis and space is limited to 100 participants for each time slot. Online payment can be done with an eCheck, Discover, Visa or MasterCard credit cards as well as debit cards. Please note there is a 3.49% fee for using this service. Tickets will be mailed to you prior to the event on Dec. 1. 

There will be no refunds and tickets will not be available at the door.

Penn High School’s Drama Club will present “Boo Bash”  in the Studio Theater on Thursday, Oct. 25.

“Boo Bash” features two shows, and admission is free.

The first show, “Wren and Moose”, is scheduled for 6 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 25. It is a 25-minute children’s Halloween show written by Penn High School student Kenny Collymore-Williams. After the show, there will be Halloween candy and a short meet-and-greet with the characters.

The second show, “Death and All His Nonexistent Friends”, is a 30-minute young adult Halloween show, also written by Kenny Collymore-Williams. It is scheduled to start at 7 p.m., and features a few more jumps, bumps, and scares.

According to Drama Club Sponsor Crystal Ryan, “Boo Bash” is a student-led project. It is student-written, directed, acted, and teched.

“The Drama Club developed this event as a way to have a fun, free event for the community, but more importantly, the Drama Board members wanted a low pressure, fun way to engage incoming theatre students,” Ryan said. “With such a large program, it is a great way to get our “Intro to Theatre” involved in a performance situation. 

“The other unique thing about this event it is Penn’s first stage reading!” Ryan said. “Stage readings are how most professional playwrights get their works initially read before they go on to a huge, full production. Having several aspiring playwrights in our program, I would like begin implementing this more in our program to teach students how to get their work read, produced, and out in the professional world.“

Once again Penn-Harris-Madison School Corporation schools, in all grade levels tested, scored above Indiana’s averages. The variance between P-H-M’s pass rate over the state is at least 10% or higher across all grade levels and subjects.

For grade 10, 75.6% of P-H-M students passed the ELA test and 58.4% passed the Math portion. The district’s overall pass rate for grade 10 was 56.4%.

For grades 3-8, 78.0% of P-H-M students passed the ELA test and 74.8% passed the Math test. P-H-M’s overall district pass rate for grades 3-8 was 68.3%.

For grade 10, P-H-M ranks in the Top 5% out of 291 public school corporations. In grades 3-8, P-H-M is in the Top 6% of public school districts out of 294 public school corporations.

When reviewing the Corporation’s performance on the last round of ISTEP+ (grades 3-8) test results, P-H-M Superintendent Dr. Jerry Thacker commented “P-H-M teachers and administrators are incredibly committed to our vision of excellence and offer the best education in the Michiana area. I am very proud of the fact that P-H-M is one of the state’s top performing school districts. The credit goes to our outstanding teachers, students and parents.”

The show schedule for the 2018-19 school year has been set, with the first show of the season kicking off on Wednesday, Sept. 12 at 6:30. Click here for the full schedule.

Patrons are now able to reserve and purchase tickets online through the P-H-M ​RevTrak Web Store. More  details online at www.phmschools.org/dvt.  

The first day back for the school of the 2018-19 school year for Penn-Harris-Madison schools was Wednesday, August 22. Superintendent Dr. Jerry Thacker and Penn Principal Sean Galiher were up early to do live interviews on local South Bend TV stations.

Dr. Thacker then began his annual 15 schools in 3 days tour. Longtime Board Member Larry Beehler accompanied Dr. Thacker on the first two days. Take a look at their visits …

Today was New Teacher Orientation for Penn-Harris-Madison. 

Fransisco Cardoza will be Elm Road’s ENL teacher this year.

Click to get more details on P-H-M’s Penn's New Teacher Class of 2018.

Campers will have the opportunity to learn from Kingsmen and University of Notre Dame alum Austin Torres at the upcoming Kingsmen Basektball Day Camp!  

After a great career at Notre Dame, Austin is giving back to Penn High School and Penn-Harris-Madison Schools by passing on his knowledge to younger players. Austin will be will be a lead instructor at the Kingsmen Day Camp June 11th -15th.

The camp is for boys currently in grades 4-8th grade. Registrations are still being accepted up until the first day of camp.  Click here to register online or to download and print a pdf flier.

Click to check out the full list of other Kingsmen Athletic Camps being offered this summer.

Penn High School was proud to have 17 students earn valedictorian honors and two students earn salutatorian honors for the Class of 2018 during Commencement held on Friday, May 25, 2018.

Of those 17 Valedictorians, two of them, Christopher Mazurek and Matthew Rach, attended Elm Road Elementary School.

CHRISTOPHER MAZUREK

Christopher attended Elm Road Elementary and Grissom Middle School.

Christopher’s college plan is to attend Northwestern University.

While attending Penn, Christopher’s activities, honors and team memberships include Band, Quiz Bowl and the South Bend Symphony Orchestra.

MATTHEW RACH

Matthew attended Elm Road Elementary and Grissom Middle School.

Matthew’s college plans are to attend Purdue University and will study Mechanical Engineering.

While attending Penn, Matthew’s activities, honors and team memberships included National Honor Society, Swim Team, TEAMS member and Academic All-Star.

Click to read more points of pride from the Class of 2018.

The Food Service Department of the Penn-Harris-Madison School Corporation is participating in the Summer Food Service Program for Summer 2018.

FREE MEALS will be available to children 18 years of age and under, or persons more than 18 who are determined by a state or local public education agency to be mentally or physically disabled and who participate in a public or non-profit private school program established for the mentally or physically disabled. 

The program will operate Monday through Friday. All sites will be closed on Wednesday, July 4, 2018.

Please click here for more information and a complete list of sites and dates.