North Penn High School received two well-deserved accolades this month as two national publications named NPHS in their listings of top schools. The publications are The Washington Post and US News and World Report.

For the fourth consecutive year, The Washington Post recognized North Penn High School as one of the top high schools in the nation in its annual report, The High School Challenge. North Penn High School is one of only 33 schools in Pennsylvania to make the list. It is ranked 1,746th nationally.

The Washington Post explains the calculation as dividing the number of Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate or other college-level tests a school gave in 2013 by the number of graduating seniors. Also noted are the percentage of students who come from families that qualify for lunch subsidies and the percentage of graduates who passed at least one college-level test during their high school career, called equity and excellence, (E&E).The Washington Post website goes on to say that while not a measure of the overall quality of the school, the rating can reveal the level of a high school's commitment to preparing students for college.

A few days after this recognition from The Washington Post, the North Penn School District received a notice that North Penn High School was named one of the top public high schools in the nation by US News and World Report. The high school ranked number 1,338 nationally and number 36 in the state of Pennsylvania.

US News and World Report evaluated more than 19,400 public high schools in 50 states and the District of Columbia. Schools were evaluated on overall student performance on state-mandated assessments, as well as how effectively schools educated their black, Hispanic and economically disadvantaged students. Schools were awarded gold, silver or bronze medals based on state proficiency standards and how well they prepare students for college.

North Penn High School received a silver medal and was one of more than 4,800 schools who earned a medal as part of their ranking. In the national rankings, 500 schools earned gold medals, 1,519 were awarded silver and 2,668 took home bronze.

"This recognition affirms the hard work of our students and our staff and exemplifies our philosophy of continuous improvement," said Burton T. Hynes, principal, North Penn High School. "The root causes of this success can be found in families who support education, elementary programs and teachers that build a strong foundation, middle schools that prepare our students well for the challenges of high school, a high school staff committed to excellence, and a school board that supports our programs and staff so that our students can maximize their potential."

The North Penn Gallery Art Show opens to the public on Wednesday, May 28 from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. and reopens on Thursday, May 29, from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. Art work created by students from Kindergarten through 12th grade will be on display. The North Penn Gallery Art Show is an impressive show that features a multitude of media from painting to photography to sculpture and more. Students will also be on hand to demonstrate their artistic skills, such as drawing and throwing on the potter's wheel.

Additionally, the Gallery includes the Senior Show which features art work created by seniors who have taken three or more art classes throughout their high school years. It includes a reception for these seniors, their families and friends on Wednesday evening from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. in the art pod of North Penn High School.

Don't miss this wonderful experience. It is located in the K-pod concourse, gym and J-pod of North Penn High School, 1340 Valley Forge Road, Lansdale, PA 19446.

Schools throughout North Penn School District celebrated Earth Day on April 22.

First grade students at Hatfield Elementary School "grew" their science curriculum while growing flower seeds on Earth Day! They will watch as their seeds grow from their original form to full flowers, just in time for summer! Click here to see pictures of their planting process.

North Wales Elementary School teacher Mr. Fickert, 6th grade teacher and Beautification Committee member, along with staff and parents facilitated an Earth Day Clean-Up for a school wide service project. The day was a wonderful learning experience and service to the school and community, everyone who helped showed pride in their school! Click here to see pictures of the North Wales Elementary School clean up in action.

The NP ADvantage Program is selling advertising space in the 2014-2015 Activities Calendar. The calendar design will incorporate advertisers' logo, address, phone number and website along with space for a coupon or special offer. A QR code will link directly to printable coupons on the NPSD website available throughout the year for NPSD families and community members. The coupon/offer can be of the advertisers' choice, and can be available during a specific month, multiple months or all year. Only five months are left, and will sell quickly! Contact Erin Crew at 215-853-1027 or [email protected] for more information!

The North Penn School District announced that Closed Captioning is now available on North Penn Television.

North Penn Television has deployed software from ENCO systems that uses a speech recognition engine to listen and transcribe audio from NPTV broadcasts in near real-time (typically four to six seconds).

Closed Captioning is a service for viewers who are hard of hearing, providing subtitles of all speech on television programming. Closed Captioning is provided on most commercial programming as required by the Federal Communications Commission, though it is not required on an Educational Access Channel such as NPTV. As an educational, non-commercial channel, NPTV is exempt from the closed captioning requirements.

Over the past several years, there have been requests from members in the North Penn community to provide a closed captioning service for NPTV. In the past, the cost of a closed captioning service was completely out of reach financially. With innovations in technology and using an automated hardware/software system, the system automatically generates captioning on live or recorded video. Utilizing this system, real-time, live captioning can be provided to our hard of hearing audience any time, without any advance notice and without the high costs of live captioners or signers.

Deploying this service provides more accessibility to all video programming to our community. Statistically, ten percent of the population has a hearing impairment. To view closed captions, press the closed captioning button on your TV or Cable remote control.

The speech recognition is about 95% accurate and will improve with current and historical script information to build a local dictionary which will allow the system to improve accuracy over time.

For more information on NPTV and closed captioning, please contact Bob Gillmer, Coordinator of Communications Media, at 215-853-1033. NPTV is available to all cable subscribers on Comcast channel 28 or Verizon channel 29.