Huntertown Elementary School

Northwest Allen County Schools, 15330 Lima Road, Huntertown; kindergarten through fifth grade; the Wildcats; opened in 1922 as the town's school for every grade, and the oldest building in this wave

The Town's First Schools: Huntertown was founded by William T. Hunter, and its first school story is a seminary. The Perry Centre Seminary was founded in Huntertown in 1856, a school of higher learning for its time and place, and it closed five years later when its faculty and adult students enlisted in the Union Army; the town's teaching has run through war and consolidation ever since. What Huntertown taught its younger children between the seminary's closing and the twentieth century is not documented in the sources consulted, and this entry claims none of it. The documented line begins in 1922.

The 1922 School: "Huntertown Elementary School, 15330 Lima Road, opened in 1922 as a K-12 school but has evolved over time as the town has grown." So The Journal Gazette's Dave Gong wrote on December 11, 2022, in an account of the town celebrating its school's one hundredth birthday, kept since on the Allen County Genealogical Society's page of the county's early schools. One building took every child in town, from kindergarten through the senior class, and the building on Lima Road is still at work a century later: the district's own asbestos summary, printed in its 2026 to 2027 elementary handbook, records asbestos removal at the Huntertown School in campaigns running from 1989 to 2018, the upkeep of a building the district has never stopped using. A commercial directory's founding field agrees with the newspaper: 1922.

The High School Goes: The K-12 building lost its upper half to consolidation. When Northwest Allen County Schools was organized in the middle 1960s from the townships of Lake, Eel River and Perry, Huntertown's high school was one of the two, with Arcola's, that the district's board voted in 1967 to merge into the new Carroll High School, which opened in 1969 south of the town. The high school went; the elementary school stayed on Lima Road, and it has now outlasted its own high school by nearly sixty years, teaching the grandchildren and great grandchildren of students who once finished school in the same rooms.

The Federal Record: The National Center for Education Statistics has counted the school for thirty nine years, 1987 to 2025, and the series is the district's growth told in one building. Seven hundred fifty two students in 1987; a peak of seven hundred sixty four in 2009; then four hundred ninety seven in 2010, the first school year of Eel River Elementary's operation a few miles south, a step printed as the sequence it is, with no cause assigned in the sources consulted; a low of four hundred eighty six in 2022; and a climb back to five hundred sixty three students in 2025, taught by thirty two teachers at eighteen students to a teacher. Minority students were twenty four percent of the school in 2025, Asian students the largest share at eight percent. Public School Review places its overall testing in the top half of Indiana schools, seven hundred twelfth of one thousand seven hundred forty three, while SchoolDigger ranks it two hundred eighty sixth of one thousand five Indiana elementary schools in 2025 and gives its English language arts proficiency as fifty four point zero four percent, above the district's fifty one point two eight percent and the state's forty point three. Its attendance zone is computed at about thirty one point five square miles over the north of the district, and its students go on to Carroll Middle School and Carroll High School.

The Other Huntertown: This school's name is shared, and the sharing is a trap of the directories. Huntertown Elementary School in Versailles, Kentucky, in Woodford County, is a real school with its own record, four hundred forty three students and a testing rank in the top ten percent of Kentucky schools, and the national directories carry a profile for each Huntertown side by side. Figures from Kentucky, its enrollment, its principal, its PreK grade span, are not this school's, and none are used here; this school's record is the Indiana one, on Lima Road, opened in 1922.

Today: The school's principal is Casey Stansifer, and his arrival is dated in the news record: named in April 2018, he took the wheel on July 1, 2018, reported KPC News that June, coming from two years as a district curriculum coordinator, spending the May before he started inside the building learning it from the interim principal, Rick Vorick, who retired that summer. Stansifer was still presenting as Huntertown's principal to the state's principals institute in 2019 and 2020, and the district's directory still pairs him with the school in 2026. The Wildcats are the school's own name for itself, carried into the 2026 holidays on its site in spirit wear offering "the EVER POPULAR Wildcat Christmas option." A building that opened when Warren Harding was president, four years before its district existed in any form, now teaches kindergarten through fifth grade to a town growing around it on every side: the oldest school in this wave, and still, by the federal count, gaining students.

Sources:

1. The Journal Gazette, "Huntertown celebrates its school's 100th birthday," by Dave Gong, December 11, 2022, as copied on the Allen County Genealogical Society's Early Schools page: Huntertown Elementary School, 15330 Lima Road, opened in 1922 as a K-12 school and now serves kindergarten through fifth grade.
2. KPC News, June 20, 2018: Casey Stansifer named principal in April 2018 and taking the wheel July 1, 2018, after two years as a district curriculum coordinator, succeeding interim principal Rick Vorick; and the Indiana Principals Leadership Institute presentations of 2019 and 2020, carrying Stansifer as Huntertown Elementary's principal.
3. Northwest Allen County Schools, About Us directory, read November 11, 2026: Huntertown paired with Casey Stansifer and phone 260-637-3181; and the district's Elementary Handbook 2026 to 2027, asbestos summary: asbestos removal at the Huntertown School across 1989 to 2018.
4. Huntertown Elementary School site, ht.nacs.k12.in.us, news post of November 3, 2026: the Wildcat spirit wear and "the EVER POPULAR Wildcat Christmas option"; and Wikipedia, "Huntertown, Indiana": the town founded by William T. Hunter, and the Perry Centre Seminary founded in 1856 and closed five years later when its faculty and adult students enlisted in the Union Army.
5. National Center for Education Statistics, Huntertown Elementary School (school ID 180825001415), as republished by Public School Review: 563 students in 2025 and 32 teachers; minority enrollment 24 percent; overall rank 712th of 1,743 Indiana schools; the series of 1987 to 2025, with 752 students in 1987, 764 in 2009, 497 in 2010 and 486 in 2022; the attendance zone of about 31.5 square miles; and by SchoolDigger: rank 286th of 1,005 Indiana elementary schools in 2025, English language arts proficiency 54.04 percent, and the Carroll Middle and Carroll High School feeders.
6. This history's published Carroll High School entry and Arcola Elementary School entry: the 1967 board vote merging Huntertown's and Arcola's high schools into the new Carroll High School; and the Public School Review and SchoolDigger profiles of Huntertown Elementary School, Versailles, Kentucky, consulted to keep the namesake's figures out of this school's record.