Walt Disney School Update

Your children are taught by the state's leading and award winning educators. Teachers, along with families, are an integral part of our “Triangle of Success”-- providing academic excellence in all 15 P-H-M schools. All P-H-M teachers are rated either "Highly Effective" or "Effective," according to IDOE evaluation ratings. Excellence Happens Here!

Dear Parents,

Each day we have the pleasure of teaching your children, and a core element of that is literacy instruction. Put simply, the first mission of school is to ensure literacy for all students (with mathematics a close second). We work very hard toward this goal, and I'm happy to share about some recent literacy based work that occurred this week at school.

Our teachers meet biweekly with grade level colleagues in a program called Teacher Leadership Teams. This most recent cycle focused on topics within our newly adopted reading curriculum, myView. Teachers were able to share resources, collaborate, and problem solve through their questions with the digital interface of the new curriculum. Also occurring this week, we were able to recognize and celebrate our October reader's of the month! We continually stress the importance of reading at home, and tracking your minutes on your reading calendar. This program celebrates students who read a high number of minutes. We know there is a direct correlation between the amount of reading a student does, and their long term proficiency.

Lastly, we invite all families to school the evening of December 8th for our first ever Reading in a Winter Wonderland event. We will have many fun reading-based activities for students, and many informative session for parents, led by our amazing teachers. We hope to see everyone there!

It's a Great Day to be a Dolphin!

Mr. Towner

We are working through collecting remaining funds from our World's Finest Chocolate fundraiser, and will announce a date for the prize day soon! Thank you to all the families who participated!

We look forward to our next PTO event, "Donuts with Dolphins", spread over three mornings on December 19th, 20th, and 21st. Parents of K-1 students may join us on the 19th; 2nd and 3rd parents may join on the 20th, and 4-5 parents on the 21st. We welcome you to come join your student for a donut!

Have students across multiple grade levels? Just come on the date that works best for you!

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!

Any parents with questions should contact Derby Photography at (574)277-8646. A parent must send in a picture retake form in order for the picture to be taken.

• 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%.
• PHM is in the top 3.67% of school corporations in the State of Indiana!

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!

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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