Walt Disney School Update

Penn-Harris-Madison practices sound fiscal responsibility that has resulted in the lowest tax rate in St. Joseph County without ever requesting a referendum, while promoting optimal safe learning environments in 15 school buildings.

Dear Walt Disney Families,

Wow - we have an incredible school community! I first want to thank you for your support for our fundraiser. In less that a week...we have sold out of chocolate! That has never happened before! We know that students still have cases of chocolate that they are actively selling. As your child sells all of the chocolate, please have the money returned ($60) to our front office. Our PTO gets a portion of these funds, and it allows us to do really neat events, and to give additional supports to our teachers.

This evening we have our first PTO event, our Fall Festival. Our hope is that many families are able to attend. I want to thank our PTO for organizing fun events for our school community. PTO is one way we invite parents to be involved, and I want to encourage all parents to join us at a PTO meeting if you are available. The meeting dates are listed on our school website. At each meeting I share important details from school, and it's an opportunity for parents to learn about ways to further connect with our school community.

As well, we are very excited to host all parents for our upcoming Parent-Teacher conferences on October 18th and 19th. Sign-ups were sent electronically earlier this week. Please be sure to book a time slot. Our intent is to meet with the parent of every student in our school. It's very important for parents and teachers to meet with regard to each student's progress. We value our parent partnerships greatly - it takes a village!

Thank you for your continued support of our school!

- Mr. Towner

With Covid restrictions eased, PHM schools are again accepting parent visitors during lunch periods. Please note that space is limited, so we are using the following sign-up genius. It can be accessed via this link.

Our process will be subject to change as we evaluate this rollout. Thank you for your patience and understanding!

We are really excited to share about our new Short Circuits Robotics Club! We have a team of third graders, who meet weekly with "coaches" from our high school robotics team. They will end up having a competition between the other ten PHM elementary schools. This program is funded by our PHM Education Foundation. I thank Mrs. Ludwig for being the club sponsor for our Short Circuits team!

At Monday's school board meeting I will have the pleasure of sharing about our instructional programs at Walt Disney, along with information about our testing outcomes. We have great news to share!

• As reported by the IDOE similar schools summary, Walt Disney is in the top 6.7% of schools that are similar in size and demographics, as measured by ILEARN. Of 127 similar schools, we outperform 118 of them. Our focus is of course on outperforming everyone, and being the best!
• Walt Disney continues to beat state averages on the IREAD-3 assessment, and we have returned to pre-Covid performance for our students in third grade. Walt Disney is the only school in the state where minority subpopulations and ENL subpopulations have outperformed the overall school performance on IREAD-3 (as well as beating the state overall passing percentage!) Our free/reduced subpopulation always outperforms the state for that category by nearly 10%.

Skyward Family Access is your one stop shop to your child's student information system information. This is everything from report cards to updating your child's emergency contacts. Along that line - Please make sure you have entered updated emergency contact information for your child!

If you have questions about Skyward Family Access, please email them to familyaccess@phm.k12.in.us and we will be glad to assist you!

PHM must be in compliance with all state and federal laws with regard to students immunizations. As a reminder, the due date for immunization records to be updated is Wednesday, September 14th. Please work with your family doctor to have these completed as quickly as possible if you have not already done so.

If you have questions, please feel welcome to call our office, and we can connect you with our health aide or school nurse. As well, if you have a religious objection to immunizations, please contact our health office, and they will send home with your child the form that would need to be completed.

We want to remind all parents that free/reduced meals and textbook assistance is available for eligible families. An application can be completed for this program online, by following the link below. As well, we are happy to provide a paper copy upon request.

For information on school fees, or to proceed with paying your child's school fees, please follow the button below.

To access accounts digitally, go to https://www.phmschools.org/pay-meals-online to access our School Cafe program online.

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