Lindley Elementary School

Fort Wayne Community Schools, 2201 Ardmore Avenue, Fort Wayne; prekindergarten through fifth grade; the Lions, in royal and gold; opened in 1970, named for Superintendent Aaron T. Lindley, and since 1992 the district's Spanish immersion school

The Namesake: Aaron T. Lindley ran Fort Wayne's schools for most of a decade. The succession of superintendents, printed in Central High School's Caldron yearbook history, runs Justin N. Study, then R. W. Himelick in 1917, L. C. Ward in 1920, Merle J. Abbett in 1937, and then: "Aaron T. Lindley was named to the position in 1952. Lester Grile became superintendent of schools in 1961." District directories through the 1950s list Lindley in the superintendent's chair, and the 1956 Caldron records his schooling, an Earlham College bachelor's degree, a Butler University master's degree, and graduate study at Columbia, Purdue, Chicago and Northwestern. In 1968, seven years after he left the superintendency, the school board voted to name the new elementary school on Ardmore Avenue for him. The district remembers that the same meeting also chose the names for Wayne and Northrop High Schools, three schools named in one night's work.

The Building: The school opened in 1970; a compiled list of Fort Wayne school openings gives the year, and the district keeps no history page for Lindley, so 1970 stands on the compiled list alone and is printed as such. The building stands on Ardmore Avenue on the city's west side, next door to Portage Middle School. That adjacency, unremarkable for twenty years, became the hinge of the school's story in the 1990s, when Lindley took on the experiment that still defines it.

The Immersion School: In the fall of 1992 Lindley became the district's Spanish immersion school, and for years it was the only one. The program was built under Principal Alicia Rodriguez-Bower: one immersion class per grade, beginning with fifty kindergarten and first grade students, neighborhood children taken first and the remaining seats filled by a lottery held to a racial balance, with busing provided. The district of that era was building magnet programs to keep its schools balanced, and Lindley, with three hundred students in a building with room for five hundred, had space to become one. Rodriguez-Bower resigned in 1998 and Gerald Arthur, who wrote the program's history, succeeded her; she had also fought to carry immersion onward into Portage Middle School next door. In the fall of 2001 the superintendent put the choice plainly: take immersion schoolwide or give it up. From the 2002 to 2003 school year every entering kindergartner and first grader at Lindley entered partial immersion, and the all English program phased out behind them. By 2004 the school held about four hundred fifty students, nearly four hundred of them in the program, and Arthur reported schoolwide passing rates up seventeen points in language arts and nineteen points in math in the first year every Lindley third grader had learned in Spanish.

Enrollment: The National Center for Education Statistics counted four hundred nineteen students at Lindley in 1988. The count peaked at four hundred sixty nine in 2002, slid to two hundred ninety two in 2021, and has recovered to three hundred thirty in 2025, taught by twenty five teachers at about thirteen students to a teacher. The school's Spanish character shows in the numbers: Hispanic students were six percent of Lindley in 1988, reached forty five percent in 2013 and 2014, and stand at thirty five percent in 2025, the largest single group, ahead of Black students at twenty nine percent and White students at twenty seven percent. About seven in ten Lindley students qualify for free or discounted lunch.

Today: The immersion model has softened into something more modest. Today's Lindley is departmentalized, each grade split between two teachers, one for reading, writing and social studies and one for math and science, and every student takes a daily thirty minute Spanish class with a weekly forty five minute rotation. The school celebrates La Fiesta on the first Thursday in May, runs Study Connection tutoring with Fort Wayne Rotary Club volunteers, and matches students with Lunch Buddies mentors through Big Brothers Big Sisters. Dr. Jennifer Nickell has been principal since 2018. Lindley students feed into Portage Middle School and Wayne High School. SchoolDigger, working from state test data, ranks the school 712th of 1,005 Indiana elementary schools in 2025.

Sources:

1. Fort Wayne Community Schools, Facebook post, April 25, 2019, collected in Allen County Genealogical Society, Elementary Schools in Allen County, Indiana, Allen INGenWeb, 2026: the 1968 school board meeting naming the school for Aaron T. Lindley, former superintendent, and choosing the names for Wayne and Northrop High Schools at the same meeting.
2. Central High School, Caldron yearbook history, 1963, full text at archive.org: the superintendent succession placing Lindley's appointment in 1952 and Lester Grile's in 1961; and the Caldron of 1956: Lindley's education at Earlham, Butler, Columbia, Purdue, Chicago and Northwestern, and his arrival in 1952.
3. Fort Wayne Community Schools, directories of 1953 to 1954, 1958 to 1959 and 1959 to 1960, full text at archive.org: Aaron T. Lindley listed as superintendent.
4. History of Public Schools in Fort Wayne, compiled openings list, fortwaynesouthside.com, 2026: the Aaron T. Lindley school beginning in 1970.
5. Gerald Arthur, Principal, Lindley Elementary School, "Partial Spanish Immersion Program Expands by Offering Academic Excellence for All," ACIE Newsletter, February 2004, Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition, University of Minnesota: the program's establishment in the fall of 1992 under Alicia Rodriguez-Bower as the district's sole immersion school; the strand of one class per grade beginning with fifty students, the neighborhood first lottery with racial balance and busing; three hundred students against a capacity of five hundred; the 1998 succession; the fight for continuation at Portage Middle School; the superintendent's 2001 choice and the schoolwide conversion from 2002 to 2003; the test gains of 2003 and the counts of 2004.
6. Lindley Elementary School, About Us and Meet the Principal pages, lindley.fortwayneschools.org, 2026: the departmentalized structure, the daily Spanish class and weekly rotation, La Fiesta, Study Connection and Lunch Buddies; Dr. Jennifer Nickell principal since 2018.
7. National Center for Education Statistics, Lindley Elementary School (180363000541), as republished by Public School Review and SchoolDigger: enrollment of 419 in 1988, the peak of 469 in 2002, 292 in 2021 and 330 in 2025; the Hispanic share of 6 percent in 1988, 45 percent in 2013 and 2014 and 35 percent in 2025; twenty five teachers; free or discounted lunch eligibility between 67 and 70 percent in recent years.
8. SchoolDigger, Lindley Elementary School, 2026, from Indiana Department of Education data and federal feeder records: students go on to Portage Middle School and Wayne High School; a rank of 712th of 1,005 Indiana elementary schools in 2025.
9. Prep Sportswear, Lindley Elementary School Lions store, 2026: the Lions, in royal and gold.