Mt. Vernon Senior High School 

Mount Vernon High School

MV High School is located in the southern part of Indiana, in the town of Mount Vernon. The rural setting of Posey County makes our part of the world a beautiful place to learn and grow. MV High School is in the  Metropolitan School District of Mount Vernon. 

Our student enrollment averages 650 students that engage in advanced technological learning with our 1:1 instruction with Chromebooks daily.  In 2017, we proudly had over two million dollars awarded in scholarships among our senior class and five National Merit Scholarship Finalists.  We offer 23 sports teams for both boys and girls.  Every year, we have a medley of conference, state, and regional award recipients for our dedicated athletes.  In addition, our fine arts academy consistently produces high-quality art as well as, a wonderful band, choir, and theater performances.

MV High School serves grades 9-12. We are a state accredited school with  a grade of A. Our demographics include 33.5% economically disadvantaged and 19.3% disabilities. Our student population is 90.4% Caucasian or White, 1.7% Black/African-American, 3.9% Multiracial, 0.2% Asian and 3.6% Hispanic. Approximately 0.3% of our students are considered English Learners.

Mt. Vernon  High School employs 48 full-time general education classroom teachers where a highly-effective rating for educators is given to 79.2% of those teachers.  

In addition to general education, Mt. Vernon High School offers all students varied opportunities to learn and grow through STEM, music, art, and physical education classes. We have four teachers with special education licensing and four and a half teacher assistants supporting special education teachers and students. 

For further support, Mt. Vernon High School students benefit from two school wide eLearning/instructional coaches, a district wide STEM coach, three school counselors, a school nurse, and a school psychologist. Mt. Vernon High School also has a Speech Language Pathologist and ENL teacher available for students. We feel very blessed at Mt. Vernon High School to have such wonderful teachers and support personnel. 

STEM JOURNEY AT Mt. Vernon High School

Our district administration sent a team (Our Superintendent, Technology Coordinator, Jr. High Principal, and eLearning Coach) to attend a Future-Ready Leadership Conference in Indianapolis, Indiana in 2017. At that conference it became clear that automation will eventually eliminate so many of our jobs of today and the future is wide open to careers in STEM. Inequities and disparities must not impede the progress for all our students to participate in learning opportunities preparing them for an information-rich, technologically sophisticated, entrepreneurial, global economy that requires collaboration, communication, creativity, and critical thinking skills. Our goal became clear that preparing all students for an innovative technology-rich future must be a driving force. and trained our teachers in design-thinking, project-based as well as community-based learning, and challenge activities. 

Our district also applied for an IDOE Summer of eLearning Grant in 2016 and successfully planned and hosted a 4Cs Conference. In 2017, we invited our Posey County partner, MSD of North Posey, to join in our conference as co-hosts. In 2018, we invited the University of Southern Indiana to also join as a co-host. Through these conferences our teachers, and many others from Indiana, Kentucky, and Illinois, were introduced to collaboration, communication, creativity, and critical thinking sessions and internationally recognized featured keynote speakers. As a result, our classrooms began to change and student-centered learning with challenging science, math, engineering strategies began to take more of our attention. With the help of a progressive innovative tech coordinator, our teachers and students moved from consumers of technology to designers of learning opportunities with technology as our assistant. Technology tools have allowed our teachers and students to engage in more rich learning experiences.

The challenges of the current health crisis have only strengthened our position to provide all students and teachers with opportunities to grow their skills in the 4Cs. In the first part of the 2019-2020 school year, our teachers stepped up to new challenges to make virtual learning as rich an environment as on-campus classes. Our teachers successfully met the challenges of a tough school year.  During the 2020-2021 school year many students were on-campus and masked.   Wanting to provide a virtual option during the pandemic year, we hired full-time virtual teachers and a virtual-learning coach.  Throughout those challenges, our mission remained. STEM skills carried us through. Our teachers became stronger and ever-changed. Future-ready now means even more. We became ready for learning in any situation. The skills we employed during the health crisis are actually STEM skills that we can teach in our classrooms. By addressing these skills, we can successfully equip our students for future-ready jobs and skills.

• Statistics 

• Problem-Solving 

• Creativity 

• Argumentation 

• Intellectual Curiosity 

• Data-Driven Decision Making 

• Flexibility 

“The trick for teachers is to give their students authentic problems to tackle in school, problems that require students to draw on different areas of knowledge and skill.”

—Claus von Zastrow, chief operating officer and director of research for Change the Equation in Washington, D.C.

Our journey to STEM certification has brought parents, community partners, administrators, teachers, and students together. Engaging in real-world problems and opportunities for growth has strengthened student confidence as they problem solve and build hands-on projects that serve as models of engagement, exploration, explanation, elaboration, and evaluation. Our STEM classes have changed the landscape of learning. Students are excited to go to STEM class. Science and math have a new importance in students’ attitudes and interests.

Becoming a STEM certified school is a new milestone that we have planned for and excitedly anticipate. This accomplishment will only drive our efforts to achieve more!

We have honors content at the highest level possible in core content areas that are challenging and rewarding to students.  These classes are off of a standards-based curriculum which prepares students for anything they choose to do.  We offer dual credit AP (Advanced Placement) opportunities for pre-college credit.  Our teacher to student ratio is lower than the state average which helps teachers understand students more specifically and better meet their needs in the classroom.

We have block scheduling which is similar to college-level classes to help students adjust well to higher learning after high school.  If a vocational school is a better fit for your child, then we also have courses for Juniors and Seniors at the Southern Indiana Career & Technical Center.