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.

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.