Prairie Vista Elementary School

1989–present · 15400 Brick Road

Prairie Vista opened in 1989 as the first school of Granger's building wave, and it is the wave's decorated veteran: the district's own history page dates the opening to 1989 and sets the building in "a lovely, park-like setting" — soccer fields, tennis courts, baseball diamonds, playgrounds, and a thirteen-acre prairie nature area with marked trails, the school taking its name and its outdoor classroom from the ground it stands on. Its teams are the Pumas, in red and black. Twice the school has carried the nation's school honor: Prairie Vista was named a National Blue Ribbon School in 1996-97 and again in 2015, the second time as an "Exemplary High Performing School" in the U.S. Department of Education's classification — the eighth Blue Ribbon designation in the corporation's history to that date, on the district's own count. On U.S. News & World Report's 2027 Best Schools list it stands #3 among some 1,020 ranked Indiana elementary schools, on the school's published page. Its students go on to Schmucker Middle School — the one Granger elementary that feeds west to Schmucker rather than to Discovery — and then to Penn High School.

Amanda Fox, carried at school strength, with the pointer flagged: the work that put Prairie Vista in this build's awards record was done in its third-grade classrooms. Amanda Fox, a third-grade teacher at Prairie Vista, spent four summers working with the University of Notre Dame's Professor Michael Niemier on ways to weave computer science into the elementary STEM curriculum at Prairie Vista and other local elementary schools, and expanded the school's after-school coding courses. In December 2020 she was chosen Indiana's only state finalist in mathematics for the Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching (PAEMST) — the highest honor the United States bestows on K-12 STEM teachers — nominated by John Gensic, a fellow PHM teacher and past PAEMST winner in science. The award itself arrived in February 2022, when President Biden named 117 teachers nationally and Fox among them; by then the district's announcement seated her as a fourth-grade teacher at Elsie Rogers Elementary, the finalist work itself having been Prairie Vista's. The district's directory, read in November 2026, seats her as Assistant to the Principal at Moran Elementary in Osceola. Her FULL entry — the award whole, the Notre Dame program, and the career course — is owed to the Awards leg of this build and is not written here; this entry carries her at the strength of the school she was teaching in when the finalist work was done, and flags the pointer as the brief directs. As Prairie Vista stands in November 2026: kindergarten through grade 5, 513 students (NCES, 2026-27 directories), and Gary Gardner is principal, on the district's own directory.

Sources:

1. Prairie Vista Elementary School, "Our School," prairievista.phmschools.org (opened 1989; the park-like setting and thirteen-acre prairie nature area; the Pumas; the feeder line to Schmucker and Penn; U.S. News 2027 ranking #3), read November 2026.
2. Penn-Harris-Madison School Corporation, "Prairie Vista Named 2015 National Blue Ribbon School," September 29, 2015, and "Northpoint Nominated as a National Blue Ribbon School," January 19, 2016 (Prairie Vista's Blue Ribbons of 1996-97 and 2015; the district's eight designations to that date), phmschools.org.
3. Penn-Harris-Madison School Corporation, "PHM Teacher receives U.S. Presidential award for Math Teaching," February 10, 2022 (Fox a fourth-grade teacher at Elsie Rogers at the award; chosen in December 2020 as Indiana's only PAEMST math finalist while a third-grade teacher at Prairie Vista; the after-school coding expansion; Trustee Clare Roach's part in the nomination), phmschools.org.
4. University of Notre Dame News, June 14, 2021 (the four summers with Professor Michael Niemier; the computer-science curriculum work at Prairie Vista; Fox the only Indiana math finalist; the nomination by John Gensic), news.nd.edu.
5. Penn-Harris-Madison School Corporation, school directory, phmschools.org (15400 Brick Road; Gary Gardner, principal; Moran Elementary — Amanda Fox, Assistant to the Principal), read November 2026; NCES via PublicSchoolReview, 2026-27 (513 students).