J. Wilbur Haley Elementary School

Fort Wayne Community Schools, 2201 Maplecrest Road, Fort Wayne; prekindergarten through fifth grade; the Comets; an English Language Learners school; built in 1969 and named for an educator who gave the district thirty six years

The Namesake: J. Wilbur Haley began teaching in 1924, as a high school social studies teacher in Hartford City, and came to Fort Wayne five years later to teach at Bloomingdale. The district's own biography walks him through the system he would one day help run: teacher at Franklin Elementary and at Central High School, then principal in turn of Miner Elementary, Washington Junior High and Central High itself. In 1954 he was appointed director of elementary and special education, and in 1963 assistant superintendent of instruction. He retired in 1965, thirty six years after he arrived, and he belongs to the small company of Central High School principals whose names Fort Wayne later put on elementary schools, alongside Chester Lane, Louis Ward and Fred Croninger. Haley died in 1992, more than two decades after the school that carries his name opened its doors.

The Building: The school rose on Maplecrest Road in 1969, on the city's east side, four years after its namesake's retirement. It was one of the buildings the district put up as the postwar enrollment wave reached the elementary grades, and it has worked the same blocks ever since. In October 2019 the school marked its fiftieth anniversary, an occasion The Journal Gazette covered that month. Fifty years in one building gives a school a particular kind of memory: the children in its classrooms now include the grandchildren of its first classes, in a neighborhood that has changed around a school that has not moved.

Enrollment: The federal record shows a school of steady size. Its attendance area takes in about six square miles of the city's east side. The National Center for Education Statistics counted five hundred ninety one students at Haley in 2005, five hundred sixty in 2023 to 2024 and five hundred eighty three in 2024 to 2025, and the school's population is described in the federal summaries as relatively flat across the last five school years. The composition has broadened more than the headcount. In 2023 to 2024 White students were thirty four percent of the school, Black students twenty nine percent, Hispanic students twenty percent, students of two or more races twelve percent and Asian students five percent. Minority enrollment stands at seventy one percent of the student body.

The Work: Haley carries the district's English Language Learners program, serving children who arrive at Maplecrest Road speaking another language at home, and the need around the school is plain in the state numbers. On the state's ILEARN assessments, twenty one percent of Haley students reached proficiency in English language arts and just under sixteen percent in math in the most recent SchoolDigger summary of state data, and chronic absenteeism has run between eighteen and twenty three percent. Those figures describe the work, not the worth of the place: a school where a fifth of the children are learning English while they learn everything else is doing two jobs at once, and the attendance fight is the first of them.

Today: In 2026 Haley is an open, operating elementary school of about five hundred eighty students on Maplecrest Road, the Comets, in Board of School Trustees District 3. Its students feed into Blackhawk or Lane middle schools and from there to Snider High School. The building its namesake never ran, named for a man whose own classrooms were downtown, is in its sixth decade of east side service.

Sources:

1. Haley Elementary School, Our History page, haley.fortwayneschools.org, 2026: named for J. Wilbur Haley, teacher, principal and assistant superintendent of instruction; his career from Hartford City in 1924 through Bloomingdale, Franklin and Central High, the principalships at Miner, Washington Junior High and Central High, director of elementary and special education in 1954, assistant superintendent of instruction in 1963, retired 1965 after thirty six years; the school was built in 1969, offers the English Language Learners program, feeds Blackhawk or Lane middle schools and Snider High School, and sits in Board District 3.
2. Jamie Duffy, "Haley Elementary marks 50th anniversary," The Journal Gazette, October 24, 2019, collected in Allen County Genealogical Society, Elementary Schools in Allen County, Indiana, Allen INGenWeb, 2026; the society's summary adds that J. Wilbur Haley died in 1992.
3. Allen County Genealogical Society, High Schools in Allen County, Indiana, Allen INGenWeb, 2026: schools named for Central High School principals, including J. Wilbur Haley, Chester Lane, Louis Ward and Fred Croninger.
4. National Center for Education Statistics, J Wilbur Haley Elementary School (180363000533), as republished by Public School Review, SchoolDigger and elementaryschools.org: enrollment of 591 in 2005, 560 in 2023 to 2024 and 583 in 2024 to 2025, the 2023 to 2024 composition, minority enrollment of 71 percent, and an attendance area of about 6.1 square miles in the eastern part of the city.
5. SchoolDigger, J Wilbur Haley Elementary School, 2026, from Indiana Department of Education data: ILEARN proficiency of 21.05 percent in English language arts and 15.85 percent in math, and chronic absenteeism between 17.8 and 23.1 percent.
6. Prep Sportswear and SpiritShop, J Wilbur Haley Elementary School stores, 2026: the Comets.