Brentwood Elementary School

Fort Wayne Community Schools, 3710 Stafford Drive, Fort Wayne; prekindergarten through fifth grade; the Bears; the Buschor HEAR Preschool sits next door; the school's founding year is not documented in the sources searched for this page

The Missing Founding: Brentwood is the quietest record in this wave. The Allen County Genealogical Society's elementary schools page, which carries a dedication date for Abbett and a namesake for Croninger, carries one item for Brentwood: a photograph of the preschool next door. No source searched for this page states when Brentwood Elementary was built, opened or dedicated, who it was named for, or what it cost. Public School Review's "Year Founded" field gives 1957. That field is an aggregator value with no district source behind it, and this project has caught it before wearing a building year as a founding year, so it is printed here as a caution and nothing more. The date in this article's sorting key, 1987, is the first year of the school's federal record, the earliest documented evidence available, and it is a sort key only. Brentwood's founding year remains an open question, and this page leaves it open.

The School Next Door: What the society's single item does document is the building beside the school. A photograph posted by Fort Wayne Community Schools on September 27, 2018 shows the Buschor HEAR Preschool, which the district's caption describes as housing a special program for hearing impaired students, located next to Brentwood Elementary. The district lists the preschool among its own early childhood programs, housed at Brentwood. Why the preschool carries the Buschor name is not explained in any source read for this page. The elementary school itself runs a Gifted and Talented program, its directory listings note.

Enrollment: The National Center for Education Statistics counted two hundred ninety students at Brentwood in 1987 and two hundred seventy one in 1988, the low point of the series. The school then grew for two decades, reaching a peak of five hundred forty nine students in 2010 and again in 2012, before easing back to four hundred fifteen in 2024 to 2025, taught by thirty five teachers, about twelve students to a teacher. Brentwood draws from about one and two tenths square miles of the Brentwood Park neighborhood on the northeast side, and most of its children live within a mile of Stafford Drive.

The Student Body: In 1988 White students were seventy eight percent of Brentwood and Black students eighteen percent, with Hispanic and Asian students at one percent each. In 2025 the school is thirty three percent Black, twenty eight percent White, eighteen percent two or more races, twelve percent Asian and nine percent Hispanic, a mix that gives Brentwood one of the highest diversity scores in the state listings, 0.77 against a state score of 0.57. Free lunch eligibility tells the harder half of the same story: seventeen percent of Brentwood's students qualified in 1988, and sixty seven percent qualified in 2025, with six percent more at the reduced price.

Feeders: Brentwood's students go on to Lakeside Middle School and then to North Side High School, the chain SchoolDigger's feeder records give for the school.

Today: In 2026 Brentwood is an open, operating elementary school of about four hundred twenty students on Stafford Drive, the Bears. Its own site reports that its students passed the state reading assessment at a rate of 97.7 percent, and describes a morning car line worked as a small party, staff out front with music, singing and dancing at drop off. The building's first chapter is still missing from the record. When it was raised, and for whom, if anyone, it was named, the sources searched for this page do not say.

Sources:

1. Allen County Genealogical Society, Elementary Schools in Allen County, Indiana, Allen INGenWeb, 2026: the Buschor HEAR Preschool photograph, posted by Fort Wayne Community Schools on September 27, 2018, a special program for hearing impaired students located next to Brentwood Elementary. The society's page carries no founding, building or dedication item for Brentwood itself.
2. National Center for Education Statistics, Brentwood Elementary School, as republished by Public School Review: enrollment of 290 in 1987, trough 271 in 1988, peak 549 in 2010 and 2012, 415 students in 2024 to 2025, thirty five teachers, the attendance area of about 1.2 square miles, the racial composition in 1988 and 2025, the diversity score of 0.77, and free lunch eligibility of 17 percent in 1988 and 67 percent in 2025. Public School Review's "Year Founded 1957" is an unverified aggregator value, printed here as a caution only.
3. Brentwood Elementary School, school site, brentwood.fortwayneschools.org, 2026: Home of the Bears; the 97.7 percent passing rate on the reading assessment announced in the site's news panel; the car line description.
4. GreatSchools, Brentwood Elementary School profile, 2026: the Gifted and Talented program; 3710 Stafford Drive; principal contact Matthew Meighen.
5. SchoolDigger, North Side High School feeder records, 2026: Brentwood Elementary School among North Side's feeder elementary schools, with Lakeside Middle School as its feeder middle school.