Fairfield Elementary School

Fort Wayne Community Schools, 2825 Fairfield Avenue, Fort Wayne; prekindergarten through fifth grade; the Falcons; the building began as Fairfield Junior High School

A Junior High First: The elementary school on Fairfield Avenue is the second school to live in its building's name. "Formerly Fairfield Junior High," the Allen County Genealogical Society records, over a district photograph posted in October 2018. The society's middle schools page lists a Fairfield Junior High yearbook for 1963, and the junior high's own yearbook survives whole for 1976: The Voyager, Fairfield Junior High School, 2825 Fairfield Avenue, printed for the bicentennial year with a cover designed by a student, Cindy Cobbs. Inside, Charles Hoffman is the principal, and Dr. Larry Johnson is spending his first year at the school, learning its pace, the editors wrote, within days. No source searched for this page gives the building's construction year or the junior high's opening year. The date in this article's sorting key, 1963, is the yearbook year, the earliest documented evidence of the school, and nothing more.

The Teachers: One Fairfield career is on the record in detail. Betty Stein taught English and social studies at Fairfield Junior High, rose to chair both departments, and left to become curriculum coordinator at Memorial Park, her obituary notice in the diocesan newspaper recounts. The detail matters for what it shows about the building in its junior high years: a school large enough, and departmental enough, to have chairs of English and social studies at all, staffed by teachers the city remembered when they died.

The Conversion: When Fairfield stopped being a junior high and reopened as an elementary school, no source searched for this page says. The bracket is all the record gives. The junior high is documented in 1963 and still publishing its yearbook in 1976. The federal record for the elementary school, which carries an identification number outside the sequence of the district's purpose built elementaries, counts six hundred forty students in 1987 and six hundred six in 1988, so the change had been made by then. The district's board minutes from the reorganization years that retired the junior highs are the likely source, and until they are read the conversion year stays blank here rather than guessed.

Enrollment: Fairfield the elementary school has been shrinking gently for a generation. The National Center for Education Statistics counted six hundred forty students in 1987, a trough of four hundred thirty one in 1994, a recovery to a peak of six hundred forty three in 2001, and four hundred eighty one in 2024 to 2025, down nine percent across five years, taught by forty teachers, about twelve students to a teacher, in an attendance area of about one square mile of the near south side. The student body has turned over twice inside that span. In 1988 White students were fifty seven percent of the school, Black students thirty one percent and Hispanic students eight percent. In 2025 Hispanic students are forty nine percent, Black students twenty three percent, White students thirteen percent, students of two or more races eleven percent and Asian students four percent.

Mobility: Fairfield's hardest number is not enrollment. Superintendent Thomas Fowler-Finn, tabulating how often Fort Wayne children changed schools in 1998 to 1999, gave Fairfield a mobility rate of 93.6 percent and a stability rate of 58.8 percent, and described it plainly as an inner city school. Nearly every child in the building that year was touched by a move in or out. Free lunch eligibility ran at about two thirds of the school at both ends of the federal record, sixty seven percent in 1988 and sixty six percent in 2025, and crested at ninety one percent in 2010 and again in 2014.

Today: In 2026 Fairfield is an open, operating elementary school of about four hundred eighty students on Fairfield Avenue, the Falcons, in a building that spent at least its first documented thirteen years teaching junior high students. The Voyagers of 1976 would find the same address and a school full of children half the age of the ones their yearbook photographed.

Sources:

1. Allen County Genealogical Society, Elementary Schools in Allen County, Indiana, Allen INGenWeb, 2026: formerly Fairfield Junior High, over an FWCS photograph posted October 25, 2018.
2. Allen County Genealogical Society, Middle Schools in Allen County, Indiana, Allen INGenWeb, 2026: a Fairfield Junior High School yearbook for 1963.
3. The Voyager, Fairfield Junior High School yearbook, 1976, Internet Archive full text from the Allen County Public Library copy: 2825 Fairfield Avenue; Principal Charles Hoffman; Dr. Larry Johnson's first year at Fairfield in 1975 to 1976; cover design by Cindy Cobbs.
4. Today's Catholic, March 30, 2014: Betty Stein taught English and social studies at Fairfield Junior High, became chair of both departments, and then became curriculum coordinator at Memorial Park.
5. National Center for Education Statistics, Fairfield Elementary School (180363002197), as republished by Public School Review and SchoolDigger: enrollment of 640 in 1987, 606 in 1988, trough 431 in 1994, peak 643 in 2001, 481 students in 2024 to 2025, forty teachers, the attendance area of about 1 square mile, the composition in 1988 and 2025, and free lunch eligibility of 67 percent in 1988, 91 percent in 2010 and 2014, and 66 percent in 2025.
6. Thomas Fowler-Finn, "Student Stability vs. Mobility," School Administrator, American Association of School Administrators: Fairfield Elementary School, an inner city school, with a mobility rate of 93.6 percent and a stability rate of 58.8 percent in 1998 to 1999.
7. Fairfield Elementary School, school site, fairfield.fortwayneschools.org, 2026: Home of the Falcons.