MESSAGE FROM THE PRINCIPAL
Welcome to the Penn-Bernville Elementary, one of two great elementary schools that are part of the Tulpehocken Area School District system of schools. Our school features a kindergarten through grade 6 program with a highly qualified and caring staff. We offer a challenging standards based curriculum. The district motto – “expect, believe, achieve” reflects our philosophy that all children are capable of accomplishing great things given honest encouragement and a challenging, but nurturing environment.
We expect our students and staff to treat each other with kindness and respect. To ensure our expectations we utilize an anti-bullying program featuring class meetings. These programs empower students to be part of the decision making process to develop meaningful, effective solutions to problems in our school community. Our school has received the Anti-Defamation League's No Place For Hate School designation the last three years.
We believe that ALL children can learn and have the right to learn in a safe environment. Further, we believe that a challenging curriculum and meaningful assessment will push all of our students to higher levels of academic achievement. We believe that the school and the community should partner together to benefit children.
We have demonstrated that our efforts have produced higher levels of achievement by larger numbers of students. The Penn-Bernville Elementary School has met the Annual Yearly Progress (AYP) goals established by the Pennsylvania Department of Education for the last eight years. Once again, our students in grades 3 through 6 have met the Annual Yearly Progress criteria for the year 2009. Last year we received a Title I Academic Achievement Award from the State of Pennsylvania specifically for our growth in our Engilsh as a second language population. We are proud of our accomplishments, but ever mindful that we have more work to do to in order to guarantee that our students achieve.
We encourage parents, students, staff, and community members to work together toward our common goal of student success. We invite you to join us in this endeavor! Please contact our school for more information about volunteer opportunities.
Sincerely,
Bonnie L. Benfer
Penn-Bernville Elementary Principal