News Articles

Congratulations to the Mt. Vernon Community School Corporation Board of Trustees for receiving the Exemplary Governance Award from the Indiana School Board Association (ISBA). They received this award at the Commendable level, which is granted to school boards that have a majority of board members with Commendable individual status.

Mt. Vernon Community School Corporation (MVCSC) celebrated three Unified Champions field days in May with preschool, elementary, middle and high school students participating in the fun. Unified Champions is a Special Olympics program that engages schools in creating climates of inclusion, acceptance, respect and human dignity for ALL students. Students with and without disabilities competed on the same teams to provide an inclusive environment where every student participates regardless of athletic, intellectual, ambulatory or functional abilities.

Mr. Donald (Donnie) Turner has been selected to be the new principal of Mt. Comfort Elementary School. Mr. Turner comes to Mt. Vernon from the Mooresville Consolidated School Corporation where he has served as the principal of North Madison Elementary for the last four years. Pending approval from the Mt. Vernon Community School Corporation Board of Trustees in June, Mr. Turner will begin his tenure at Mt. Vernon this summer.

Fortville Elementary, McCordsville Elementary, Mt. Comfort Elementary and Mt. Vernon Middle School have been recognized as Project Lead The Way (PLTW) Distinguished Schools for the 2022-2023 school year for providing broad access to transformative learning opportunities for students. The elementary schools are three of 492 schools across the U.S. to receive the honor of being a PLTW Launch school, while MVMS is one of just 212 schools to receive the honor of being a PLTW Gateway school. All four of these schools are retaining this distinction from last year.

Mt. Vernon Community School Corporation is proud to share this year’s district winners of Teacher of the Year (TOY) Mrs. Karen Riesterer, Family and Consumer Sciences Teacher at Mt. Vernon High School, and Staff of the Year (SOY) Mrs. Wendy Mayo, Instructional Assistant at Mt. Comfort Elementary!  Both winners were recognized at the Mt. Vernon Education Foundation’s Black and Gold Gala in early April.

Mrs. Alissa Lockwood has been named the assistant director of curriculum for the Mt. Vernon Community School Corporation (MVCSC) and will begin this tenure on July 1, 2023, pending approval from the Board of Trustees on Monday, April 17. Lockwood has held a variety of leadership positions in MVCSC and is currently serving as the Mt. Comfort Elementary School principal.

Did you know that besides our wonderful PTO’s supporting all our hard-working staff, MVCSC is also trying to support our staff’s whole-person wellness? From setting up a staff coffee bar to each school to offering a discounted wellness membership through a Hancock Health partnership, to hiring 12 new behavioral coaches, to a free financial planning platform – supported by our Mt. Vernon Education Foundation – supporting our staff during stressful times is a high priority.

Thanks to the Mt. Vernon Education Foundation's outreach, nearly 100 department leads from the new Walmart distribution center recently volunteered at Mt. Vernon schools. On Read Across America Day, the Walmart employees enjoyed playing dodgeball with young students, engaged with students during lunch and recess duties, and of course read to students.

The Promise Indiana Hancock County program recently celebrated another successful year of enrolling hundreds of kindergarteners in their own personal College Choice 529 Plan. The PI Hancock County program aims to foster a community-wide culture where all students have the opportunity to open a CollegeChoice 529 Direct Savings Account, which assures that students have a college savings account at an early age. The program strives to ensure every student believes they can have a post-secondary education and has their community’s support.

The Groundbreaking Ceremony for the new Fortville Elementary School (FES) and the Transportation Building was held on November 30 and began with a welcome from Superintendent Dr. Jack Parker.

Superintendent Dr. Jack Parker shared an enrollment update at the recent MVCSC Board of Trustees meeting. A few key points include that our enrollment has had a little slower growth than predicted in the 2019 demographer's report. There are likely a number of reasons for the slower growth which could include the impact of a pandemic, the supply of building materials available to builders, inflation and potentially many more. 

Mt. Vernon appreciates those who have served! The three Mt. Vernon elementary schools and the middle school held convocations which emphasized the sacrifices made by the veterans. The convocations included student-led patriotic songs, speeches, poems, decorations, and parades. Veterans in attendance greatly appreciated the well-deserved recognition.

MVCSC recently hosted local realtors and builders in the community at an engaging breakfast where they learned more information about Mt. Vernon. Attendees also enjoyed student entertainment, played a game and trivia, won prizes, listened to a presentation from Dr. Parker and also heard from the Cumberland and McCordsville Town Managers. Mt. Vernon resources were also shared with realtors in an effort to help sell listings.

 The America’s Farmers Grow Communities program, a Bayer Fund program, partners with farmers to provide grants to local nonprofits and schools to help their communities. Through the program, farmers enroll for the chance to direct a $5,000 donation to a local eligible nonprofit organization or school of their choice. Local farmer, Bob Cook, recently directed a $5,000 Bayer Fund America's Farmers Grow Communities donation to the Mt. Vernon Community School Corporation (MVCSC) and was recognized at a summer Board of Trustees meeting. The funds will be directed to Mt. Vernon High School programming.

For the second year in a row, all five schools in the Mt. Vernon Community School Corporation have earned a Highly Effective Schools Accreditation from Solution Tree. This accreditation is a significant achievement that reflects all five schools’ commitment to reaching and maintaining the highest levels of educational quality. Mt. Vernon High School, Mt. Vernon Middle School, Fortville Elementary School, McCordsville Elementary School, and Mt. Comfort Elementary School earned this accreditation by maintaining and growing identified areas having the biggest impact on student learning and growth. These areas are directly aligned to the Professional Learning Communities at work® (PLC) process and the High Reliability Schools framework.