Franke Park Elementary School

Fort Wayne Community Schools, 828 Mildred Avenue, Fort Wayne; prekindergarten through fifth grade; the Foxes; a NASA Explorer School whose founding year no source in the record states

The Missing Founding: Franke Park has the thinnest paper trail of any school in this wave. The Allen County Genealogical Society's elementary schools page, which carries an entry for nearly every Fort Wayne Community Schools elementary, has no entry for Franke Park at all. The school's own site carries no history page, and no district history of the school has been found. One number does circulate: a county office directory list says the school was "Established in 1960," naming no source for the year. That is the class of aggregator value this project has learned to print as a claim and never as a fact; Public School Review, for its part, does not even carry a "Year Founded" field for this school. The founding year of Franke Park Elementary is unknown, and this page prints none. The earliest documented evidence of the school is its federal record, which opens in 1987 with three hundred eighty nine students. The date in this article's sorting key, 1987, is that evidence year, a sort key and nothing more.

The Name: No source consulted for this page documents why the school is called Franke Park, and this page guesses at no namesake. What is documented is the park. In 1921 John B. Franke, president of the Perfection Biscuit Company, donated eighty acres, the City of Fort Wayne's parks history records, and the gift grew over ninety years into a park of more than three hundred acres holding the Fort Wayne Children's Zoo, the Foellinger Outdoor Theatre and a day camp running since 1946. The zoo opened inside the park on July 3, 1965. The school stands on Mildred Avenue and shares the park's name. No source in the record connects the name to Franke's gift, so the record leaves the two side by side and unjoined. What is documented is a working relationship, and it runs through the zoo: the school's own site states that the Fort Wayne Zoo funds field trips for every Franke Park student and covers the cost for chaperones, so that no child is priced out of the trip.

The NASA Years: For a school with no founding record, Franke Park has an unusually well documented decade. It was a NASA Explorer School in 2006, one of the schools in the federal agency's classroom program built around its own science. An Intel case study of education technology, published in 2008, describes what that meant on Mildred Avenue: through video conferencing, Franke Park third graders travelled with NASA scientists to Antarctica, below the ocean, to collect meteorites, questioning the engineers and scientists about the experiments and what the work paid. The study names teacher Pamela Ghaffarian as largely responsible for the school's selection, and describes the students building and piloting a remote vehicle similar to the Mars land rover. Six years later the agency singled the school out again. A NASA news release of September 20, 2012 announced that teachers from six NASA Explorer Schools, Franke Park Elementary School of Fort Wayne among them, had received the 2012 School Recognition Award, chosen from more than four hundred seventy registered schools, and that three teachers from each school would fly student experiments aboard a reduced gravity aircraft at Johnson Space Center in April 2013. The district kept the title in front of parents for years afterward: its family support guide for 2019 to 2020 still listed "NASA Explorer School at Franke Park Elementary School" among the district's headline offerings.

Enrollment: The National Center for Education Statistics counted three hundred eighty nine students at Franke Park in 1987, taught by nineteen teachers. The school grew to six hundred twenty one students in 2005, dipped, and reached six hundred twenty one again in 2014, then thinned to three hundred eighty seven in 2021 before recovering to four hundred sixteen in 2024 to 2025, up seven percent across five years, taught by thirty teachers, about fourteen students to a teacher, in an attendance area of about three and four tenths square miles. In 1988 White students were ninety four percent of the school. In 2025 White students are thirty nine percent, Hispanic students twenty eight percent, students of two or more races seventeen percent, Black students thirteen percent and Asian students three percent. Thirteen percent of Franke Park's students qualified for free lunch in 1988. Sixty eight percent did in 2025, seventy three percent counting reduced price eligibility.

Feeders: Where Franke Park's students go next is undocumented in the sources read for this page. No feeder record naming the school's middle school was found, and the article prints the gap rather than a guessed chain.

Today: In 2026 Franke Park is an open, operating elementary school of about four hundred twenty students on Mildred Avenue, the Foxes, under Principal Andrea Larkey. Its fifth graders hold a talent show, its students spend an April night at Camp Potawatomi under a partnership the school credits to BAE, and its mascot carries a motto the school states outright: the fox stands for the "Future of Excellence." The school chant asks the question the mascot answers: "Who's that fox sneaking up on you? It's Franke Park! Franke Park! Franke Park!"

Sources:

1. Allen County Genealogical Society, Elementary Schools in Allen County, Indiana, Allen INGenWeb, 2026, read in full: no entry for Franke Park Elementary School.
2. countyoffice.org, Fort Wayne public schools list, 2026: "Established in 1960," printed here as an unverified aggregator claim with no source named.
3. City of Fort Wayne, Franke Park History, cityoffortwayne.in.gov, 2026: John B. Franke, president of the Perfection Biscuit Company, donated 80 acres in 1921; the park's growth; the Franke Park Day Camp since 1946; the Fort Wayne Children's Zoo opened July 3, 1965.
4. Intel, Education Infrastructure: Time to Change the Story, case study, 2008: Franke Park a NASA Explorer School in 2006; third graders video conferencing with NASA scientists collecting meteorites in Antarctica; teacher Pamela Ghaffarian; the remote vehicle built and piloted by students.
5. National Aeronautics and Space Administration, news release 12-328, September 20, 2012: Franke Park Elementary School among six schools receiving the 2012 NASA Explorer Schools School Recognition Award, from more than 470 registered schools, with teacher flights of student experiments at Johnson Space Center in April 2013.
6. Fort Wayne Community Schools, Student and Family Support Guide, 2019 to 2020: "NASA Explorer School at Franke Park Elementary School" among the district highlights.
7. National Center for Education Statistics, Franke Park Elementary School (180363000525), as republished by Public School Review: enrollment of 389 in 1987, 621 in 2005 and 2014, 387 in 2021, 416 students in 2024 to 2025, thirty teachers, the attendance area of about 3.4 square miles, the racial composition in 1988 and 2025, and free lunch eligibility of 13 percent in 1988 and 68 percent in 2025.
8. Franke Park Elementary School, school site and About Us page, frankepark.fortwayneschools.org, 2026: Home of the Foxes; Principal Andrea Larkey; the Fort Wayne Zoo funding field trips for every student and for chaperones; Camp Potawatomi under BAE support; the fox mascot and the "Future of Excellence" motto; the school chant.