Ascension Lutheran School

Ascension Lutheran Church (Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod), 8811 Saint Joe Road, Fort Wayne; preschool through grade eight; the school founded in 1997, the congregation in 1977

The school: Ascension Lutheran School is the parish school of Ascension Lutheran Church, a Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod congregation on Saint Joe Road on Fort Wayne's northeast side. It teaches preschool through grade eight. The school's own directory facts, carried in its verified school update, count 110 students and eight teachers, with tuition of 4,700 dollars, an average class size of sixteen, and interscholastic sports in basketball, cross country, soccer, track and field, and volleyball. Sixty percent of its faculty hold advanced degrees, and nine percent of its students are students of color. It takes part in Indiana's School Choice scholarship program, which carries public scholarship money to its families.

The congregation first: The church is twenty years older than the school, and the two foundings are printed apart, as this record prints every parish and its school. The synod's own newspaper, the Reporter, records in its obituary of the Rev. Richard Muller, a Concordia Theological Seminary professor, that Ascension was a congregation he helped establish in 1977, and names the Rev. Dr. John Stube as its first field worker. For its first two decades the congregation kept no school of its own that any source reached records. Where its children were schooled in those years, the record reached does not say.

The school's founding: The school dates its founding to 1997, the year carried in its own verified school update, the class of directory profile the school itself submits and maintains. No church or school history page stating the year was reached, and the year is printed on the school's own statement, graded as such. In the school's own words, Ascension Lutheran Church established the school to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ, providing a Christ-centered education for Lutheran and non-Lutheran families alike, as an extension of the home. Families who do not belong to a Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod congregation complete an introduction to the catechism taught by the pastor, the school's Ascension 101, as part of enrollment.

The building: The campus has grown by addition rather than by moves. Fort Wayne's Elevatus Architecture carries the school in its portfolio: the congregation engaged the firm to remodel the existing school and add a new sanctuary seating four hundred, and the architects describe a campus that has been expanded repeatedly over the years. The portfolio account reached is undated, and the work is printed here as the architects describe it, without a year.

What the record does not say: Ascension publishes little about itself beyond its directory facts, and this entry prints the gap rather than padding it. No principal is named on the school or church sources reached, and under this record's rule a school leader is named only on a school source, so none is printed; a commercial directory's naming of a school leader is recorded in the research brief and not carried here. No mascot appears in any source reached. No news coverage of the school was reached. A fuller paper record exists off the public web: the Allen County Public Library's church records bibliography lists Ascension directories and a congregational history among its holdings, waiting on a reader.

Sources:

1. Public School Review, Ascension Lutheran School profile (verified school update; enrollment data sourced to the National Center for Education Statistics): founding year as the school states it, address, telephone, enrollment, teachers, tuition, class size, sports, School Choice participation, and the school's own statement of purpose, https://www.publicschoolreview.com/ascension-lutheran-school-profile
2. The Reporter, Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, April 18, 2016: obituary of the Rev. Richard Muller, recording the congregation he helped establish in 1977 and the Rev. Dr. John Stube as its first field worker
3. Elevatus Architecture, portfolio: Ascension Lutheran Church and School, the remodel of the existing school and the new 400-seat sanctuary
4. Allen County Public Library, church records bibliography: Ascension Lutheran directories and congregational history among its holdings
5. Ascension Lutheran Church and School, alcsfw.org: the school's present site