Aspen Meadow Elementary School

Northwest Allen County Schools, 2650 Hathaway Road, Fort Wayne; kindergarten through fifth grade; the district's eighth and newest elementary school, opened in the fall of 2021, a year behind its announced schedule

The Referendum: Aspen Meadow exists because the voters of Northwest Allen County said so. In 2018 they approved the school as part of an almost thirty four million dollar referendum, about three million dollars of it set aside for safety and efficiency work across the district. The district had outgrown its seven elementary schools, and the building site chosen, 2650 Hathaway Road, sat in the middle of the growth, a short walk west of the Carroll campus. What the referendum bought first was not bricks but a map: before a single classroom could be filled, the district had to decide which children in its northwest neighborhoods would fill it.

The Map and the Delay: The boundary work was public and crowded. Seven teams of teachers, administrators, parents and students, one hundred twelve people in all, presented their own attendance plans at a meeting at Maple Creek Middle School on December 16, 2019, and KPC News covered the arguments: hold Arcola's farm country enrollment steady, some teams said; move students out of Huntertown and Perry Hill elementaries, which were teaching children in mobile classrooms, said others. The plan then was a school opening for 2020 to 2021. The building did not keep the date. Construction on Hathaway Road fell behind schedule, and The Journal Gazette reported in February 2021 that the delay was forcing a fall 2021 opening, a full school year late. The district enrolled kindergartners against the new date anyway: almost two hundred incoming kindergartners were registered by February 2021, the district's spokeswoman Lizette Downey told the paper, under attendance lines redrawn the year before to make room for a school that was not yet open.

The Design: The school had a parent in the district's own family before it had a name on a ballot. As early as January 2018, in a profile of the district's technology director Adela Dickey, KPC News recorded that the district could draw from Eel River Elementary's design for the new elementary then in planning. Eel River, opened in 2009 a mile west, was the district's proof that a new elementary could be planned whole; Aspen Meadow is its successor in that line, the second building of the district's modern elementary pattern, drawn from the first. The article prints the lineage as the district stated it in 2018, a planning position taken before the referendum passed.

The Federal Record: The National Center for Education Statistics carries the school under the district's singular name, Aspen Meadow Elementary School, and its short series climbs every year it has run: five hundred forty two students in 2022, five hundred fifty five in 2023, five hundred ninety two in 2024, and six hundred in 2025, taught by thirty seven teachers at sixteen students to a teacher. Minority students were thirty one percent of the school in 2025, Black, Hispanic and Asian students at eight percent each and students of two or more races at seven. Nineteen percent of its students qualified for free lunch and four percent for reduced price lunch. Its overall testing stands in the top half of Indiana schools, six hundred fifty third of one thousand seven hundred forty three in the 2023 ranking, with math proficiency in the top thirty percent and reading at the state average. A commercial listing gives the school six hundred eight students; the figure is a different year on a commercial directory's data and is left to it. The plural form of the school's name, Aspen Meadows Elementary, appears in a general encyclopedia's list of the district's schools and once in the district's own lease papers; the district's school, site and directory all use the singular, and this entry follows them.

Today: The district's directory names Kim Lochmueller as the school's principal, a naming with a history behind it: she began teaching at Huntertown Elementary in 1997, led Cedar Canyon Elementary for eight years, and stepped down there in June 2018 to a district special education post, so the principal of the district's newest elementary is one of its longest serving educators. No source consulted says she was the school's first principal, and none is claimed here; and no district or school source consulted names a mascot for Aspen Meadow, so this entry claims none, an uncommon silence for a district whose other schools all answer to an animal or a bird. The campus is still being built out around the children: the district's new transportation center is rising at the Aspen Meadow campus under a lease amendment of December 2025, with completion estimated for April 2027, and the district's rebalancing of 2026 splits the school's graduates between Carroll Middle School and Maple Creek Middle School while moving The Fens neighborhood from Aspen Meadow's zone to Eel River's. The district's eighth elementary opened a year late into a neighborhood still arriving; five years on, its enrollment has not yet stopped climbing.

Sources:

1. The Journal Gazette, February 11, 2021, read via mynewsonthego.com: voters approved the school in 2018 as part of an almost $34 million referendum, about $3 million of it for safety and efficiency work districtwide; construction at 2650 Hathaway Road behind schedule, forcing a fall 2021 opening; the district's eighth elementary school; almost 200 kindergartners enrolled, per spokeswoman Lizette Downey.
2. KPC News, December 17, 2019: the school announced to open for the 2020 to 2021 school year; the attendance plan presentations of December 16, 2019 at Maple Creek Middle School, seven teams and 112 people; Superintendent Chris Himsel; and January 2018: the Adela Dickey profile, recording that the district could draw from Eel River Elementary's design for its new elementary.
3. KPC News, June 20, 2018: Kim Lochmueller began teaching at Huntertown Elementary in 1997, served eight years as Cedar Canyon Elementary's principal, and stepped down in June 2018 to an assistant directorship of special education.
4. Northwest Allen County Schools, About Us directory, school site and future page, read November 11, 2026: Aspen Meadow Elementary School, 2650 Hathaway Road, phone 260-338-5345, paired in the directory with Kim Lochmueller; the larger Transportation Center with an estimated completion in April 2027; and the district's Rebalancing page: Aspen Meadow students split between Carroll Middle and Maple Creek Middle Schools, and The Fens moving to Eel River.
5. Northwest Allen County Schools, board papers, lease amendment of December 8, 2025: the new transportation center being built at the Aspen Meadow campus; the plural name form appearing once in the district's own papers.
6. National Center for Education Statistics, Aspen Meadow Elementary School (school ID 180825002711), as republished by Public School Review: 600 students in 2025 and 37 teachers; minority enrollment 31 percent; free lunch eligibility 19 percent and reduced price 4 percent; 542 students in 2022 rising yearly to 600 in 2025; overall rank 653rd of 1,743 Indiana schools in 2023.