In the on-going, continued effort to make our playgrounds more accessible to all students (with or without disabilities) Horizon teacher Joann Hartline came up with the idea to build a boardwalk that would connect the schools two playgrounds (one playground is in the front of the school, the other is behind). Today was the groundbreaking for “Broadway on Brummitt” was held and all of Horizon’s students and staff were included in the festivities. Click to see the photo gallery below.

Spring of 2018, Horizon Principal Tressa Decker reached out to Penn High School’s STEM Academy faculty to see if Penn students could help develop the plans for “Boardwalk on Brummitt.” STEM Academy students are designing the boardwalk as well as constructing it. The students have already begun building sections of the boardwalk, which will also feature a gazebo. When construction is complete, Penn agriculture students will be involved with planning the landscaping design. The goal is to have the project completed in 2019.

Students will be participating in Penny Wars and other fundraising activities to help raise money for the project.

Horizon Elementary is grateful to United Federal Credit Union (UFCU), which is donating $3,000 towards the purchase of the gazebo; to Home Depot for donation of building materials, such as shingles for the gazebo roof; and to the University of Notre Dame Project Management students, led by faculty member Sharon Hayward, who are assisting Horizon in the scope and management of the project.

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. 

Student of the Month is a great way for the teachers to show how much they appreciate and respect students that live out the lifelines that we try to instill in them. 

The teachers in each grade level, select one student (at times more than 1) each month from their classrooms that model the chosen lifeline(s) for that month. 

October’s Lifelines were: Awareness and Empathy. 

Awareness is the ability to directly know and perceive, to feel, or to be cognizant of events. Students who model this lifeline understand the world around them and are attentive to what they have to do . 

Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.  Students who model this lifeline are able to “put themselves in another’s shoes”. They seem to understand how someone else feels. 

Therein lies the beauty of these awards: it doesn't have anything to do with grades or accomplishments. It shows how important it is to “be yourself”.

Here are your October Students of the Month: 

Kindergarten

Grade 1

Grade 2: 

Grade 3:

Grade 4:

Grade 5:

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.“

Monday, Nov. 5
5:30 p.m.
Schmucker Middle School, 56045 N Bittersweet Rd.

Indiana law (IC 20-19-3-11) now requires that all schools provide age appropriate and research based instruction on child abuse and child sexual abuse to students in grades kindergarten through 12th. Penn-Harris-Madison has partnered with the Family Justice Center, Youth Service Bureau of St. Joseph County and the St. Joseph County Special Victims Unit to provide this instruction for our students.  

In November and early December, staff from the Family Justice Center and Youth Service Bureau St. Joseph County will present a series of age appropriate curriculum to elementary students in grades K-5. Each unit is age appropriate specific to the grade level.

To learn more about the new State mandated child abuse/sexual abuse prevention curriculum, all P-H-M parents are invited to attend an optional parent information night on Monday, November 5, 5:30 p.m., at Schmucker Middle School, 56045 N Bittersweet Rd.

Parents have the option to have their student(s) participate in the state mandated educational program.

Parents are asked to return either a paper version of the permission slip or click here to submit it electronically through our school website. *Please note a permission form needs to be returned for each individual child enrolled in a Penn-Harris-Madison School.

If you wish to fill out the electronic version of the form, please click here. 

To download and print a pdf copy of the elementary (grades K-5) permission form, please click here.

Adobe Acrobat Reader will be required to view the pdfs. If you do not have Adobe Acrobat Reader, please visit Adobe’s website, at this link www.get.adobe.com/reader/, to download your free version.

If you opt to fill out the paper form, you will need to print the form, fill it out and return it to the school.

 Here is the flyer for our next PTO Family Fun Night, which will be on Friday, Nov. 9th.  We hope to see lots of Horizon families at this "Family Math Night" hosted by Mathnasium of Granger located in Heritage Square.  This was one of our best Family Fun Night's last year, and we are looking forward to another great evening of Math Games and Fun!

Ms. Jessica Moore and Ms. Kelly Ghyselinck, two very ingenious and creative lunch room aides, have discovered a way to bring the order back to the lunch room by involving the students in organized, fun activities. In honor of National School Lunch Week (Oct. 15-19), we put together this video so that our families could see how much fun our students are having …

October 25, 2018 from 6-8pm 

Join us for our annual Boogie Ball for a scary good time!

Click HERE to find out more information about location. Don’t forget to RSVP on the HORIZON PTO WEBSITE. 

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.

Other significant highlights from the Spring 2018 ISTEP+ results:

• Penn High School ranks 5th out of large public school districts (500+ students tested, based on both Math and ELA pass results of grade 10)
• Northpoint Elementary School is 2nd in Indiana public primary elementary schools (schools where grades 3-5 were tested)
• Discovery Middle School is 3rd in Indiana public middle schools (schools where grades 6-8 were tested)
• A total of four P-H-M elementary & one middle school—Northpoint, Prairie Vista, Horizon and Mary Frank Elementary Schools, along with Discovery Middle School—rank among the state’s Top 50 of all 1,426 public schools 

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.”

This program empowers students to adopt a design-thinking mindset through compelling activities, projects, and problems that build upon each other and relate to the world around them. And as students engage in hands-on activities in computer science, engineering, and biomedical science, they become creative, collaborative problem solvers ready to take on any challenge.