Students took ILEARN in the Spring. The students’ results are more than just a reflection on how well they know and retained what they learned in a particular subject area. Teachers work very hard to help their students review and retain the knowledge, and when necessary interventionist educators use RtI (Response to Intervention) tools.

The Fall 2024 P-H-M Teacher Impact Awards are given to educators who had the most significant individual student growth with Spring 2024 ILEARN (grades 3-8 and high school Biology), AP Testing at Penn, and highest RtI growth. 

Principal Dr. Sean Galiher and P-H-M Superintendent Dr. Jerry Thacker took Mrs. Dawn Boulac off guard when they walked into her classroom when she was in the middle of an AP Statistics lesson. Mrs. Boulac earned an Impact Award by increasing qualifying scores on the AP Statistics Exam in May 2024; an impressive 103 students met that benchmark! In addition, Penn AP Statistics students outperformed their peers at that state and global level in both mean scores and percentage passing. Dr. Galiher also presented Mrs. Boulac with a door magnet that honors her as an Impact Award winner. Click to see the full photo gallery below.

Three other awards were given out on Thursday, December 12:

• Grace Blanchard, 6th grade, ELA/Reading, Discovery Middle School – Highest ELA/Reading growth in 6th grade when measured from mean fall ILEARN to ILEARN Checkpoints Achievement.
• LA (Kriss) High, 8th grade Math, Schmucker Middle School – Highest growth for 8th grade math, as measured from Spring ILEARN to Fall ILEARN Checkpoints. 
• Hollie Truckowski, Reading Specialist, Elsie Rogers Elementary School – Highest growth for all students in reading specialist interventions programming. Mrs. Truckowski’s students made well above average growth in two important measures of early literacy, oral reading fluency and NWF, a standardized measure of decoding ability. Mrs. Truckowski works with students who are academically at-risk in reading, and her work puts these students on an important pathway for growth. 

With the help of the building principals, Dr. Thacker surprised the teachers with the Impact Awards. He was accompanied by other members of P-H-M Administration Dr. Heather Short, Asst. Superintendent; Director of Professional Development Dr. Lavon Dean-Null; and Ryan Towner, Director of Literacy. P-H-M Education Foundation Executive Director Jennifer Turnblom was also on hand; PHMEF covered the cost for the beautiful awards which teachers can proudly display in their classrooms.

While all P-H-M teachers make an impact with their students, dedicated to helping them achieve personal academic success, the Impact Award shines the spotlight on educators who have helped their students achieve individual academic growth on their formative assessments over time. The first-ever Impact Awards were handed out in September 2023 and recognized the teachers with the most significant overall student growth during the 2022-2023 school year.

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Penn High School student Sarah Rooney has been named a Winner with Distinction in the YoungArts National Writing Competition.

Rooney is a second-year student on Penn’s Literary Magazine, Spectrum.

“Sarah is an amazing student,” Spectrum sponsor Caelea Armstrong said. “She is meticulous and detail-oriented.  Her work ethic is second-to-none.”

Winners are chosen for their caliber of artistic achievement by esteemed discipline-specific panels of artists through an adjudication process that includes multiple rounds of review.   

The winners in each category are awarded cash prizes between $250 and $10K, and Winners with Distinction are invited to participate in National YoungArts Week, January 5-12, in Miami, Fla.

P-H-M’S Board of School Trustees approved the renaming of Penn High School’s Center for Performing Arts through the P-H-M Education Foundation’s Naming Rights Campaign.

P-H-M parent Tania Bengtsson of three (Penn High School and Discovery Middle School) is donating $50,000 to the Education Foundation to have Penn’s CPA renamed the EOS (Entrepreneurial Operating Systems) – Tania Bengtsson Center for Performing Arts. The naming rights will be effective May 1, 2025 and will last for 12 years. 

Per the Naming Rights Campaign, 80% of Mrs. Bengtsson’s donation will go to PHMEF’s endowment, and 20% comes back to P-H-M to pay for teacher professional development.

Penn students William Getter, John Isacson, Nathaniel Temeles, Noah Langness, Max Hazen, Joel Benavides placed first in the Purdue Engineering Design & Development Challenge – the first high school team to win the prestigious Challenge !!!!

The students won $5,000 in scholarship money, competing with college students in the TECH 120 class at Purdue. Penn instructor Kyle Marsh’s students are not only the first high school team to be the overall winner, but it’s the first time a high school team placed in the Top 3.

Penn High School hosted its annual Showcase event for prospective students and their families on Monday, Dec. 2, 2024.

The event featured live classrooms that featured students and faculty in all of Penn’s learning academies.

A Photo Gallery is posted below:

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The Penn High School Marching Kingsmen have been selected to participate in the 2025 Dunkin’ Doughnuts Thanksgiving Parade. The event is the longest continuously held Thanksgiving Parade in the United States.

​“It is certainly an honor to be invited to perform in the Philadelphia Thanksgiving Day Parade,” Penn Marching Band Director Glenn Northern said. “Our trip will include two days in New York City as well. It is sure to be a great experience for our students”.

This week, second-grade students from Bittersweet Elementary School joined forces with Penn High School students to kick off the holiday season with delightful gingerbread-themed activities.

On Monday and Wednesday, Bittersweet’s 2nd graders took a field trip to Penn High School, where they collaborated with Penn students in creating gingerbread houses and engaging in fun gingerbread-inspired crafts. The high school students guided their younger counterparts through rolling and cutting the dough. They also read gingerbread stories and did multiple arts and crafts with the Bittersweet students.

The multi-day celebration culminated today, Friday, November 22nd, as the baked ginger bread was brought back to Bittersweet to be assembled into houses and decorated. Families joined the fun, adding colorful candies, frosting, and festive designs to the creations.

Second grade students decorating gingerbread houses has been a tradition for approximately 30 years, this is the first time that Bittersweet collaborated with Penn High School. It provided students with a creative outlet, a chance to learn new skills, and an opportunity to bond across grade levels during the holiday season.

The smiles and joy shared throughout the week are a testament to the power of collaboration and the holiday spirit!

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Penn student club Short Hair Because We Care event, held on Saturday, Nov. 16, had it’s largest turnout yet!

In all 66 people showed up at the event and donated their hair–695 inches worth! Click to see the photo gallery below. This year’s turnout was double what was collected in 2023. There were so many people a few of the stylists from Salon Nouveau stayed over an hour-and-half to make sure everyone was able to donate. Last year 33 people donated a total of 334 inches (click to see last year’s photos). 

Anyone in the community, men, women, children, can donate their hair, but a minimum of 8 inches is required. The donated hair is sent to the Children With Hair Loss organization.

To get the word out on the event, the students promoted it to students within Penn, on social media, and even had media coverage! Click here to see.

This annual event was started in 2019-2020 by a group of students when they were in 7th grade at Grissom Middle School.

“It started as something that students could give, that wouldn’t be money or something they wouldn’t have control over being young students, but everyone can donate their hair, so that’s why we started it: to give everyone an opportunity to serve even if they don’t

have other resources,” Ella Smoker Class of 2024. Click to see the WNDU-TV’s story from November 2023.

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