Leo Elementary School

Leo-Cedarville; East Allen County Schools; building dated 1932; grades 4 to 6, the middle rung of the Leo ladder; 14811 Wayne Street

The middle rung: Leo Elementary School is the middle rung of the Leo ladder, the school a Leo-Cedarville child climbs through between the first school and the last. Cedarville Elementary School, teaching kindergarten through third grade, feeds it; its own students climb on to Leo Junior/Senior High School, whose entry stands in this section. It teaches fourth, fifth and sixth graders at 14811 Wayne Street in Leo, in Cedar Creek Township, and it does so in the oldest building East Allen County Schools still keeps, a plant older than the district itself, which was not formed until the middle 1960s.

The building of 1932: The district's own facilities accounting, its list of buildings by their original construction dates, dates Leo Elementary to 1932, the earliest date on the whole list; the next oldest building in the corporation, the junior/senior high school up the road, is dated 1953. A separate opening year for the school as an institution is not documented in the sources consulted, and the township school story behind the building is told in the junior/senior high school's entry rather than repeated here. What the federal record offers is a series that opens two generations after the cornerstone: the National Center for Education Statistics counts republished by the directories run from 1987 to the present for this school, the long middle of its life carried in attendance figures rather than in any district chronicle.

The redesign years: The school's own improvement plan tells what the district's hard decade did to it, and in Leo's case the redesign gave rather than took. In 2011 Leo Elementary's population rose from five hundred twenty students to approximately five hundred ninety, because the attendance area was redrawn in the district redesign and nearby Harlan Elementary School was closed, its children sent up the ladder to Leo. The same plan records the standing the school carried through those years: the highest "A" state rating awarded annually since 1999, and recognition as an Indiana Four Star School. The building of 1932 came out of the redesign as it went in, the fixed second step of the Leo sequence.

The school today: The school's improvement plan for 2023-24 counts six hundred thirty-six students taught by twenty-three classroom teachers, and the federal count stands at six hundred fifty-three students in 2025, the population of the whole ladder's middle rung in one aging building. The directories' reckonings are the directories' own: Public School Review places the school in the top ten percent of Indiana schools on test scores for 2026-27. Its attendance zone covers about forty-seven and a half square miles of the district's northern townships, the farm and subdivision country of Cedar Creek and the townships around it.

People: Michelle Rodgers is the principal named on the school's own improvement plan for 2023-24, and on the school's family papers of the same period, and she is named here on them. No other holder of the office is carried in the sources consulted for this entry, and the commercial directories' differing name is not used.

The next building: The 1932 plant's long service is now measured against the district's own published plans. East Allen's master planning schedule for its 2025 bond projects carries a new Leo grades 3 to 6 elementary school, its design begun in August 2024 and its construction scheduled from May 2025 to May 2027, and in May 2025 the district executed a lease covering the site of the proposed construction and renovation of the current Leo Elementary School on Wayne Street. What becomes of the oldest building in the corporation when its replacement stands is not in the documents consulted; the schedule is the district's, and it is printed here as the district published it.

What is not recorded: The school's teams and mascot stand unrecorded in the sources consulted, elementary schools keeping few public marks of either, and none is printed; the Lions of the junior/senior high school are that school's, and are not transferred down the ladder here.

Sources:

1. East Allen County Schools, board hearing and facility plan document, July 9, 2024 (facilities list updated May 30, 2024): Leo Elementary dated 1932 by original construction, the earliest date in the district's list, and the master planning schedule for the 2025 bond projects carrying the new Leo grades 3 to 6 elementary school, construction scheduled May 2025 to May 2027
2. Leo Elementary School, School Improvement Plan 2023-2024 (East Allen County Schools), September 30, 2023: Principal Michelle Rodgers; enrollment of 636 students and 23 classroom teachers; the 2011 increase from 520 to approximately 590 students on the redesign's attendance change and the closing of Harlan Elementary School; the "A" rating held annually since 1999 and the Indiana Four Star School recognition
3. East Allen County Schools, Notice of Execution of Lease, May 28, 2025: the lease covering the site of the proposed construction and renovation of the current Leo Elementary School, 14811 Wayne Street
4. Public School Review and DonorsChoose, National Center for Education Statistics data for Leo Elementary School: the series of 1987 to 2025 with 653 students in 2025, the attendance zone of about 47.5 square miles, and the top ten percent Indiana ranking for 2026-27