After nearly two decades leading the Penn-Harris-Madison School Corporation, Superintendent Dr. Jerry Thacker has announced his retirement, effective in July 2025. In a heartfelt letter sent this morning to P-H-M teachers, staff, students, and families  Dr. Thacker shared his decision to step down after a remarkable 53-year career in education (click here to read the letter).

“Dr. Thacker’s vision of excellence helped shape P-H-M into one of the top-performing school districts in Indiana,” commented Chris Riley, President of the P-H-M Board of School Trustees. “We are grateful not only for his years of leadership, but for his tireless commitment and dedication to our entire community. There is no greater supporter of Penn-Harris-Madison than Dr. Jerry Thacker!”

Under Dr. Thacker’s leadership, P-H-M has achieved extraordinary milestones, including raising the graduation rate from 79% to 98%, ranking in the top 4% of the state academically, and helping students earn more than $200 million in scholarships. He also prioritized school safety, leading P-H-M to be ranked sixth in the nation for school safety initiatives.

In concert with the Board of School Trustees, P-H-M has a stellar record of financial stewardship. P-H-M overcame a $3 million deficit, built a strong and sustainable financial model, and maintained one of the lowest tax rates in the region—all while ensuring our students and staff had the resources they needed to thrive.

Reflecting on his tenure, Dr. Thacker shared “As superintendent, one of the greatest joys of my career has been attending school events and witnessing our students shine—whether excelling in academics, performing in fine arts, or competing in athletics. Our students’ talent and dedication are extraordinary.”

Dr. Thacker’s educational career began in the classroom as a 6th grade teacher at Madison Elementary School, where he taught for five-and-a-half years, before moving to Mary Frank Elementary to teach 5th and 6th grades for eight years, where he also became a Team Leader. He even did his student teaching at P-H-M, at Moran Elementary. His passion for learning and leadership soon led him to administrative roles across Indiana and beyond.

Dr. Thacker’s extensive career in educational leadership includes:

• Eastlawn Elementary School, Twin Lakes School Corporation (Monticello, IN)
  • Principal (1985-1987)
• Woodlawn Elementary School, Twin Lakes School Corporation (Monticello, IN)
  • Principal and Director of Curriculum (1987-1989)
• Saginaw Intermediate School District (Saginaw, Michigan) 
  • Director of Curriculum, Professional Development, and School Improvement (1989-1990)
• Metropolitan School District of Lawrence Township (Indianapolis, IN)
  • Director of Elementary Education (1990-1996) – Led significant academic improvements, increasing the district’s 4-Star Schools from one to eight within five years
  • Assistant Superintendent for Human Resources (1996-1998)
• Logansport Community School Corporation (Logansport, IN) 
  • Superintendent (1998-2006)
• Penn-Harris-Madison School Corporation 
  • Superintendent (2006-2025)

He earned his Elementary Education degree from Bethel College, his Master’s from Indiana University South Bend, and his Ed.D. in Educational Administration, Counseling, and Psychology from Andrews University (Berrien Springs, Michigan).

Dr. Thacker’s commitment to education has been driven by a lifelong dedication to student success. The Indiana Association of Public School Superintendents (IAPSS) named him Outstanding Educator of the Year in 2013 and again in 2017. He was also named Indiana Superintendent of the Year in 2012 and received the Sagamore of the Wabash in 2014—Indiana’s highest award—from then Governor Mike Pence. He has also been recognized as Alumnus of the Year from both IUSB and Bethel College.

Donna and Jerry Thacker will spend the winter months in Florida. Dr. Thacker plans on remaining active in the field of education working as a consultant. He and Mrs. Thacker have been longtime contributors to and supporters of the P-H-M Education Foundation.  During his tenure, the Thackers have donated $232,500, including contributions to PHMEF’s Naming Rights Campaign:

• Chris Geesman Kingsmen Athletic Center (formerly the Kingsmen Athletic Center), $25,000 
• Al Rhodes Kingsmen Court, $10,000 donated in October 2023 
• Arthur M. Klinger Planetarium (formerly the  P-H-M DVT & Planetarium), $10,000 donated in January 2024
• Yeoman Family Plaza, $10,000 donated in March 2024 
• Greg Dikos Field, $10,000 donated in August 2024 

It was announced in January that Penn High School’s new fieldhouse will be named the Dr. Jerry and Donna Thacker Fieldhouse. Click here for more information.

Reflecting on his time at P-H-M, Dr. Thacker expressed deep gratitude for the support of teachers, staff, students, parents, and the broader P-H-M community. His leadership has left an enduring impact on the district, and his legacy will continue through the students, educators, and families he has influenced.

“I will carry with me the countless memories of our shared successes and the friendships that have made this journey so meaningful,” Dr. Thacker said. “The future of P-H-M is bright because of each of you, and I have no doubt that our teachers, staff, and administrators will continue to inspire, empower, and lead with excellence. Our families will continue to raise amazing children. And our students are aptly prepared to make a difference in this world at every level.”

Details about P-H-M’s Board of School Trustees’ search for the district’s next superintendent will be announced in the coming weeks.

The student performers of this year’s school musical performance, Disney’s The Jungle Book, had a full dress rehearsal this morning for the entire school. Let’s just say they knocked it out of the park! 

The acting and singing were phenomenal! All the students and staff in the audience thoroughly enjoyed the performance. The staff director and co-directors also did a great job! Thank you Mrs. Scott (Director) 
and Co-Directors Mrs. Ginter, Mrs. Howell, Mrs. Kinney, and Mrs. Yankauskas for all your dedication.

Some of the equipment used in the production of the show was bought with a grant from the P-H-M Education Foundation.

The musical will be performed for the public Friday, May 17 and Saturday, May 18, both shows at 6:00 p.m. Tickets available for purchase at the door!

Click here for the show Program.

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This week is National Teacher Appreciation Week and Penn-Harris-Madison Superintendent Dr. Jerry Thacker is making his rounds to surprise a couple of P-H-M’s best educators with some good news.

Today, Dr. Thacker with the help of Penn High School Principal Dr. Sean Galiher and Assistant Principal Jeanie Mitchell (a former PHM Teacher of the year herself), Jeremy Starkweather was taken off guard with the news that he had won P-H-M’s 2024 Secondary Teacher of the Year honor! Local TV stations were on hand to capture it all! Mr. Starkweather’s wife, Ally who is also a teacher at Penn, was told ahead of time so she could participate in the surprise. Along with the students, a big group of fellow Penn teachers and PHM District Administrators were in the classroom to congratulate him. Click to watch the video below.

Mr. and Mrs. Starkweather are both 2013 graduates of Penn High School. Mr. Stakweather attended P-H-M’s Moran Elementary School and Grissom Middle School.

Click here to see the full photo gallery below.

Jeremy Starkweather is wrapping up his 7th year of teaching at P-H-M; but including his time as a student, student-teacher, and now a teacher, he’s been at Penn for a total of 12 years! He’s even still on the Speech & Debate Team just like he was while in school, except now he’s the coach! Mr. Starkweather is everywhere; he serves as the Assistant Coach for the Boys Cross Country Team, Coaching Consultant for the Education Foundation’s Running is Elementary, and Vice President of the Penn Building Trades Board of Directors.

Mr. Starkweather’s interests have carried over from his student days into his teaching career. Along with teaching English, Mr. Starkweather also teaches Debate, and has been serving as Penn’s Speech and Debate Coach since his first year of teaching. Prior to Mr. Starkweather at the helm, the team struggled to attract student participants; now Mr. Starkweather has made it cool to be on the Speech and Debate Team! The 2023-2024 school year both teams did extremely well. The Speech Team has 20 students advancing to the national tournament this summer; and the Debate Team not only won the State Championship, but a couple of the students even broke a record previously held by Coach Starkweather when he was a student!

For the first time in Penn history, the Debate Team won a State Championship. Additionally, out of all five state championship debate categories, three Penn students came in 1st place in two categories (one team and one individual) adding two more State Titles to the list. One of those wins was a student duo in the Policy category. Policy received a traveling trophy that has been around almost a century (in existence since 1928); and the last time the trophy was in Penn High School’s possession was when Jeremy and a teammate won it back in 2013 (his senior year)! How’s that for full circle? 

Until recently, Mr. Starkweather was known for his big bushy, blonde afro. However, thanks to Jeremy’s topnotch debate coaching skills, his team captains convinced him last summer, when the team was at the national competition, that if they won the State Championship, he would allow the students to shave his head. Jeremey Starkweather is a man of his word! He didn’t just allow his students to cut his hair, he let ALL the Speech & Debate students, Speech teacher Mrs. Danielle Black, and Superintendent Dr. Jerry Thacker get in on the action. It took over an hour to cut off 9 inches of his golden locks! Now that’s showing commitment and dedication to your students!  Click here to see that video and full photo gallery.

Speech and Debate has become so popular at Penn that Mr. Starkweather enlisted the help of his top students to see if they could create the same interest at the middle school level. Not only was there interest, there’s now Debate teams at all three middle schools with over 80 students. The past few summers Jeremy has also been offering Summer Debate Camp.

What is Mr. Starkweather’s secret to creating such an interest for Speech & Debate? It could be that he has the best and rowdiest student club floats in Penn’s Homecoming parade; but it’s also because he quite simply cares about his students and they know it. There’s no “debating” it!

During the week of May 6 along with surprising the Teacher of the Year winners, Dr. Thacker will also surprise the honoree of Classified Employee of the Year. Monday, May 6 Dr. Thacker surprised 3rd grade Northpoint teacher Nichol Mondy with the news that she was the district’s Elementary Teacher of the Year. All winners will be officially recognized at P-H-M’s Employee Recognition & Retiree Dinner on Wednesday, May 22nd. Along with a plaque, the two Teachers of the Year will also receive a grant from the P-H-M Education Foundation to use in their classroom. Both TOY winners will go on to compete for Indiana’s Teacher of the Year, which will be announced in early Fall 2024 by the IDOE.

Penn-Harris-Madison School Corporation was named among the 2024’s Best Communities for Music Education (​BCME) in the country by the National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM) Foundation for the 11^th year in a row! P-H-M is among only 17 Indiana school districts, out of about 300, that made the list.

Now in its 25th year, the 2024 Best Communities for Music Education program has recognized 583 school districts and 135 schools across the country for the outstanding efforts by teachers, administrators, parents, students, and community leaders and their support for music education as part of a well-rounded education for all children. This recognition celebrates and recognizes K-12 music teachers in school districts who found creative ways for the “show to carry on” despite schools moving online or to in-person settings where masks were required not only for student musicians and instruments.

In P-H-M elementary schools, music class is part of the regular curriculum following state standards. Students are instructed in both vocal and instrument classes. Beginning in 6th grade, P-H-M students at our three middle schools (Discovery, Schmucker and Grissom) have the opportunity to choose choir, orchestra or band as their music elective. Students at Discovery also have the option of choosing Piano Lab. Schools from elementary all the way up to Penn High School also perform musicals.

Penn High School offers the Fine Arts & Communication Academy as part of its unique academy structure. The seven academy design provides Penn students with relevant and meaningful coursework taught in smaller, supportive environments where each student is known well by his teacher and peers. Nearly a third of Penn’s total 3,500 students are enrolled in the Fine Arts Academy with the majority being involved with music programs, either Choir, Orchestra, Band or another music program.

To qualify for the Best Communities designation, P-H-M answered detailed questions about funding, graduation requirements, music class participation, instruction time, facilities, support for the music program, and community music-making programs. Responses were verified with school officials and reviewed by The Music Research Institute at the University of Kansas. Research into music education continues to demonstrate educational/cognitive and social skill benefits for children who make music.

In a series of landmark studies by scientists and researchers at Northwestern University a link was found between students in community music programs and life-long academic success, including higher high school graduation rates and college attendance. In another study from the University, it was discovered that the benefits of early exposure to music education improves how the brain processes and assimilates sounds, a trait that lasts well into adulthood. Beyond the Northwestern research, other studies have indicated that music education lays the foundation for individual excellence in group settings, creative problem solving and flexibility in work situations, as well learning how to give and receive constructive criticism to excel.

While the Indianapolis area and south will experience 100% totality for the solar eclipse occurring on Monday, April 8, 2024, the St. Joseph County area will only experience 96%.

The Michiana area will start experiencing darkness at 1:53 p.m., lasting until 4:23 p.m., with 96% totality occurring at 3:09 p.m. and lasting just over 4 minutes.

Click to watch the video below and hear from P-H-M Digital Video Theater and Planetarium Director Melinda O’Malley as she shows us what to expect in our area.

Click here to see a Indiana Department of Natural Resources map of Indiana regions that will experience varying degrees of darkness.  Click here to also get more background information on the Great American Eclipse website.

Because the partial eclipse time is occurring around elementary school dismissal times and based on the recommendations of the Indiana Department of Homeland Security and the IDOE, P-H-M will have an eLearning day on April 8. Click here for more information on that decision.

Thanks to Old National Bank and P-H-M Education Foundation, all students will have a pair of eclipse glasses to use at home when watching the eclipse with their families. The glasses will be sent home the week of March 25 before P-H-M’s Spring Break.

DVT Director Mrs. O’Malley demonstrates how the eclipse glasses should be used.

At the P-H-M Board of School of Trustees meeting on Monday, February 26, district administration made a presentation to the Board regarding the total solar eclipse taking place on Monday, April 8. As part of the presentation, district administration announced that for a variety of reasons Monday, April 8 will be an eLearning Day. If the district has used all of its allotted three eLearning Days (we currently have used two), the day will be a Virtual Learning Day. No P-H-M sponsored field trips or planned evening activities will take place on this date. Monday, April 8 is the first day back after Spring Break (April 1-5). 

Indiana is in the path of totality and is centrally located in the United States, thus the Indiana Department of Homeland Security is telling tourists, residents, school districts and public agencies to be prepared for three days of potential impact such as, oversized crowds, gridlock traffic, communications disruptions, and even nocturnal animal confusion. Click here to see the full presentation from last night’s Board meeting.

The Indianapolis area and south will experience 100% totality; while the St. Joseph County area will experience 96%. Click here to see a map of Indiana regions that will experience varying degrees of darkness from the Indiana Department of Natural Resources website. The South Bend area will start experiencing darkness at 1:53 p.m., lasting until 4:23 p.m., with 96% totality occurring at 3:09 p.m. and lasting just over 4 minutes. Because these times are around school dismissal times and based on the recommendations of the Indiana Department of Homeland Security and the IDOE, P-H-M will not be holding in-person instruction on April 8. 

Thanks to Old National Bank and P-H-M Education Foundation, all students in the district will receive eclipse glasses to use at home with instructions. Mrs. Mindy O’Malley, Director of P-H-M’s Arthur M. Klinger Planetarium and Digital Video Theater, and a team of teachers, are preparing grade-level eclipse information to send home with students. In the classrooms leading up to April 8, teachers will educate students about this nearly once-in-a-lifetime event; the next total solar eclipse where portions of Indiana will be in full totality will be 2099.

If parents have any questions, they should contact their students’ principals. Employees should contact their supervisor or Human Resources.

Penn’s school musical this year is “The Music Man.”

You won’t want to miss Penn’s talented student performers as they act out the play that follows fast-talking traveling salesman, Harold Hill, as he cons the people of River City, Iowa, into buying instruments and uniforms for a boys’ band that he vows to organize – this, despite the fact that he doesn’t know a trombone from a treble clef!

This year’s musical also includes the talents of a few P-H-M elementary and middle school students:

• Mary Cortes, 5th grade, Prairie Vista Elementary School
• Maxwell MacMillan, 5th grade, Mary Frank Elementary School
• Anniston Steele, 7th grade, Grissom Middle School
• Ezra Carrico, Katherine Hawkins, Benjamin Robertson and Noah Rohde, all in 8th grade, Schmucker Middle School

This isn’t the first year Penn’s musicals have included students from younger grades. In 2016, younger students also participated in “Mary Poppins.” But this is the first year in recent memory to have this many!

Visit bit.ly/PennMusicMan to purchase tickets.

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The 2024 FIN Mishawaka FRC District Event will once again be held at Penn High School March 1st – 3rd (open to the public on Saturday, March 2 and Sunday, March 3). The event will be held in Penn’s Main Arena. See below for a daily schedule:

Saturday, March 2

• 10:30 – 11:00 a.m., Opening Ceremonies
• 11:00 a.m. – 7:00 p.m., Qualifying Matches (No matches during Lunch, 1:00 – 2:00 p.m.)

Sunday, March 3

• 9:30 – 10:00 a.m., Opening Ceremonies
• 10:00 a.m. – 12:30 p.m., Qualifying Matches
• 12:30 – 1:00 p.m., Alliance Selections
• 1:00 – 2:00 p.m., Lunch
• 2:00 – 5:00 p.m., Playoff Matches & Awards Ceremony

Click here for the detailed daily schedule.

For elementary aged children, there’s also the Next Gen event from 11:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. on Saturday. The event will be upstairs–above Penn’s Main Arena–in the Fitness Center. This event is open to all children, not just P-H-M students. Children have the opportunity to do hands-on STEM activities, even operate a robot! Click here for pictures from last year’s event.

This year’s game is CRESCENDO^SM presented by Haas; click here to view a video about the game. FIRST^© Robotics Competition teams will use their STEM skills and creative power to turn up the volume as they design, build, and program their robots for action-packed game play. Watch the game animation to inspire ideas.

During our 2023-2024 arts-inspired robotics season, FIRST^® IN SHOW^SM presented by Qualcomm, FIRST Robotics teams will celebrate the roles STEM skills play in the arts and design, and how these skills help build a world of endless possibilities for students. Click here to learn more about FIRST^® IN and the District event being held at Penn High School.

Every P-H-M 5th grader who will be attending a P-H-M middle school as an incoming 6^th grader in the Fall 2024 has the opportunity to join an instrumental music class, which includes either band or orchestra. “Instrument Selection Night” is when students and families get to make their choice!

Fifth graders at Moran Elementary School will either attend Schmucker or Grissom Middle School for 6^th – 8^th grades. Click here for the P-H-M School Boundary map.

Schmucker’s Instrument Selection Nights are Monday, March 4th and Tuesday, March 5th.

Grissom’s Instrument Selection Nights are Monday, March 11^th and Tuesday, March 12^th.

Penn-Harris-Madison School Corporation is nationally recognized as one of the “Best Communities for Music Education” offering choir, band and orchestra at Schmucker, Discovery and Grissom Middle Schools.

At “Instrument Selection Night,” a music professional will be available to give students advice about which instrument may be best suited for them. They will be allowed to “try out” instruments from various instrument groups. Click here to download, view and print more information on Instrument Selection Night.

In order to join 6th grade band or orchestra, students must select an instrument that they will learn, practice and perform for the school year. Click this link to sign-up for your appointment at your designated school and date. 

Superintendent Dr. Jerry Thacker dropped by Moran Elementary School today to surprise another teacher with a P-H-M Impact Award. This time around, the noteworthy educator is Moran 2^nd grade teacher Melisa Bennett.

All P-H-M teachers across the district are dedicated to helping their students achieve personal academic success. The P-H-M Impact Award is shining the spotlight on those teachers who are showing the most significant overall student growth during the 2022-2023 school year. 

With the help of Principal Principal Lisa Russell, Dr. Thacker was able to catch Melisa Bennett off guard. Dr. Thacker was also joined by P-H-M administrators Assistant Superintendent Dr. Heather Short, Director of Professional Development Dr. Lavon Dean-Null and Director of Literacy and Title I Ryan Towner.

Melisa Bennett had the highest growth of all P-H-M Title I second grade teachers! 92% of students of her Moran second graders’ overall Dibels composite growth was average or higher. 36% of students were in the “above average” or “well above average” categories.

Check out all the photos of today’s award presentations on Facebook.

We thank the P-H-M Education Foundation for covering the cost of the awards.

There are more P-H-M teachers to recognize in the days, weeks and months ahead!