Carroll Middle School

Northwest Allen County Schools, 4027 Hathaway Road, Fort Wayne; grades six through eight; the Chargers; a school in its second building since 2004, whose first building stands next door as the high school's freshman campus

The Founding, in Dispute: Two dates stand in the record for this school's beginning, and this entry prints both, as this history's entry for Carroll High School already does. The district's own listing gives 1987. One school history, the history of Carroll High School carried on Wikipedia and reproduced by the Allen County Genealogical Society, gives 1984: suburban growth, it says, "caused NACS to build Carroll Middle School (CMS) adjacent to the main high school in 1984." The school's federal record reaches back thirty eight years, consistent with a late 1980s start and decisive for neither year. The entry is keyed to 1987, the district's figure, with 1984 standing beside it unreconciled. The district's board minutes of the middle 1980s are the likely resolution, and they have not been read for this entry.

The First Building: What is not in dispute is where the school began: in a building raised beside Carroll High School, close enough that the two shared a campus and, in time, a mascot. The middle schoolers were Chargers then as now. The arrangement lasted until growth outran it. By the fall of 2004 the district had built other middle schools, Maple Creek among them, and a new Carroll Middle School; the old middle school building was absorbed into the high school as its freshman campus, and it serves that purpose still, as the Carroll High School Freshman Center. The high school's own record dates the other half of the same rearrangement: in 2004 Carroll High School changed from housing grades nine through twelve to grades ten through twelve, its freshmen moving into the building the middle school had vacated.

The Second Building: The present Carroll Middle School, at 4027 Hathaway Road, opened in 2004. The district's Capital Projects Plan, adopted October 26, 2026, describes it: fifty eight classrooms, capacity for one thousand students, one hundred eighty three thousand seven hundred three square feet, on one hundred thirty two acres. Its first principal was there before it opened. KPC News reported in February 2016 that John Miller, leaving the school to become the district's director of buildings and grounds, had come to the district in 2001 as an assistant principal when Carroll Middle School still operated in the building that is now the freshman center, had been part of the building process before the new school opened in 2004, and had been the school's only principal to that date. A principal who helped build his school and then ran it for a dozen years is a founding of the second kind, and the record gives Miller that place.

The Federal Record: In 2025 the National Center for Education Statistics counts one thousand four students at Carroll Middle School, taught by about fifty teachers at about twenty students to a teacher. Minority students were twenty four percent of the school: seventy six percent White, seven percent Asian, seven percent of two or more races, six percent Hispanic and three percent Black, in SchoolDigger's rendering of the same data. SchoolDigger ranks the school one hundred twenty sixth of four hundred eighty Indiana middle schools, and about a third of its students, thirty one point nine percent, qualify for free or reduced price lunch. Its attendance zone is computed at about eighty four point six square miles, the district's northwest, the ground the high school's own zone covers. The district's counts run close beside the federal one: nine hundred forty six students in 2021 to 2022, rising past one thousand to one thousand seventeen in 2025 to 2026.

The Principals: The school's present principal is Amy Thomas, on the district's own paper: a fundraising memorandum over her signature, dated September 4, 2026, names her as principal and Brian Sherck as assistant principal and athletic director, and the district's principals graphic of October 2026 carries her with the school's Charger. In 2025 the Indiana Association of School Principals named Thomas its District 3 Middle School Principal of the Year, as the Journal Gazette's briefs recorded. Before her, Ann Linson held the chair in the district's news of November 2022, and John Miller before that, back to the building's opening. Commercial directories still name a principal the district's current papers do not; on the discipline this history applies, the district's own signed papers govern, and the directories' name is left to the directories.

Today: The school's newest chapter is a boundary line. When the district opened its third middle school, Willow Creek, in the fall of 2026, it redrew the boundaries of all three middle schools; the board approved the new map on January 12, 2026, for the 2026 to 2027 school year. The district estimates Carroll Middle at five hundred seventy eight students in that first redrawn year, deliberately underfilled, so the school can absorb growth from the large neighborhoods building inside its zone. A school founded, on any reading of its dates, because the suburbs outgrew a high school is now being emptied on purpose to make room for the same suburbs' next wave. The building on Hathaway Road has capacity for one thousand; the district means to need it.

Sources:

1. Northwest Allen County Schools, Capital Projects Plan, adopted October 26, 2026: Carroll Middle School, 4027 Hathaway Road; date of occupancy 2004; 58 classrooms; student capacity 1,000; 183,703 square feet; 132 acres; enrollments of 946 in 2021 to 2022 rising to 1,017 in 2025 to 2026; 578 estimated for 2026 to 2027; Carroll High School's 2004 change from grades 9 to 12 to grades 10 to 12.
2. KPC News (Northwest News), February 9, 2016: John Miller, the school's only principal to that date, part of the building process before the school opened in 2004, arrived in 2001 when Carroll Middle School operated in the building that is now the Carroll Freshman Center.
3. "Carroll High School (Fort Wayne, Indiana)," Wikipedia, as reproduced on the Allen County Genealogical Society of Indiana's high schools page: NACS built Carroll Middle School adjacent to the main high school in 1984; by the fall of 2004 the district had built other middle schools and a new Carroll Middle School, and the old building was absorbed as the freshman campus.
4. NCES derived district profile at schooldistricts.us, via the master inventory: Carroll Middle School opened 1987.
5. National Center for Education Statistics, Carroll Middle School (school ID 180825002294), as republished by Public School Review: 1,004 students in 2025 at about 20 students to a teacher; minority enrollment 24 percent; the attendance zone of about 84.6 square miles; 38 years of federal data; and by SchoolDigger, rank 126th of 480 Indiana middle schools and free and reduced price lunch at 31.9 percent.
6. Northwest Allen County Schools, board papers, September 4, 2026, and principals graphic, October 5, 2026: Amy Thomas, principal; Brian Sherck, assistant principal and athletic director; the Charger.
7. Northwest Allen County Schools, news release, November 9, 2022: Ann Linson, principal.
8. The Journal Gazette, via mynewsonthego.com, 2025: the Indiana Association of School Principals named Amy Thomas its District 3 Middle School Principal of the Year.
9. Northwest Allen County Schools, Rebalancing Plan, 2026: the boundary decision of January 12, 2026, and the neighborhoods assigned to Carroll Middle.