Maplewood Elementary School

Fort Wayne Community Schools, 2200 Maplewood Road, Fort Wayne; prekindergarten through fifth grade; the Eagles, in kelly green and white; built in 1956 and named for the neighborhood it serves

The Name: Maplewood Elementary School is named for the neighborhood in which the school is located, and the school was built in 1956. The district's own history page says both things in two plain sentences, and a district history post of May 9, 2019 repeats the building year. Maplewood belongs to the ring of elementary schools Fort Wayne raised in the 1950s for the postwar subdivisions spreading across the south side of the city, and like several of its classmates it was named for where it stood rather than for anyone who had run the schools.

The Building: The building stands at 2200 Maplewood Road, in the 46819 ZIP code on the city's south side. Beyond the year 1956, the printed record of the building is thin: no source consulted for this page names its architect, its first principal or a dedication date, and those facts are left open here rather than guessed at. What the record does hold, in full and year by year, is the federal count of the children who filled the building from 1988 forward, and that count carries most of Maplewood's written history. The school has taught the Maplewood neighborhood's children, in the same building, ever since 1956.

Enrollment: The National Center for Education Statistics counted five hundred one students at Maplewood in 1988, three hundred ninety one of them White and ninety four Black. The school held near five hundred students into the late 1990s, thinned to three hundred seventy seven in 2005, and climbed back to five hundred twenty one in 2022 before settling at four hundred seventy seven in 2025. The composition changed far more than the size. White students, seventy eight percent of the school in 1988, are one hundred forty five of the four hundred seventy seven students of 2025. Black students number one hundred thirty four, Hispanic students seventy three, and Asian students sixty seven, up from three in 1988, with fifty seven students of two or more races. Black enrollment had peaked earlier, at one hundred seventy six students in 1999, when the school was in its long slide from five hundred students toward the 2005 trough. Free or discounted lunch eligibility climbed from seventeen percent in 1988 to a peak of eighty nine percent in 2010 and stands at seventy two percent in 2025. Classes have shrunk with the times: the student to teacher ratio stood at twenty two in 1988, and about thirty three teachers now work at about fourteen students to a teacher. The district spends $12,145 per student here.

Today: In 2026 Maplewood is a Title I elementary school with an English language learner program, teaching about four hundred eighty students in Board of School Trustees District 5. The Eagles wear kelly green and white. Its students feed into Miami Middle School and Wayne High School, the same path taken by Levan Scott Academy's students across the south side. On the state's tests for 2024 to 2025, the district summary for the school's ZIP code puts proficiency at twenty eight percent in English language arts and twenty nine percent in math, and SchoolDigger ranks Maplewood 783rd of 1,005 Indiana elementary schools in 2025, twenty second among the district's thirty one ranked elementary schools. The rank itself has climbed from the bottom of the state list: SchoolDigger placed Maplewood at about the fourth percentile of Indiana elementary schools in 2010 and about the twenty seventh in 2024, a slow rise across fifteen years of state tests.

Sources:

1. Maplewood Elementary School, History page, maplewood.fortwayneschools.org, 2026: named for the neighborhood in which the school is located; built in 1956; the Title I and English language learner programs; feeders Miami Middle School and Wayne High School; Board District 5.
2. Fort Wayne Community Schools, Facebook post, May 9, 2019, collected in Allen County Genealogical Society, Elementary Schools in Allen County, Indiana, Allen INGenWeb, 2026: the school was built in 1956.
3. National Center for Education Statistics, Maplewood Elementary School (180363000544), as republished by SchoolDigger: enrollment of 501 in 1988 with its composition, the trough of 377 in 2005, 521 in 2022 and 477 in 2025 with the 2025 composition; free or discounted lunch eligibility of 17 percent in 1988, 89.2 percent in 2010 and 71.5 percent in 2025; about thirty three teachers.
4. SchoolDigger, Maplewood Elementary School, 2026, from Indiana Department of Education data: average spending of $12,145 per student; a rank of 783rd of 1,005 Indiana elementary schools in 2025, twenty second among the district's ranked elementary schools, with a rank history running from a state percentile of 4.0 percent in 2010 to 26.8 percent in 2024; proficiency of 28.44 percent in English language arts and 29.36 percent in math in the summary for the 46819 ZIP code.
5. Prep Sportswear, Maplewood Elementary School Eagles store, 2026: the Eagles, in kelly green and white, at 2200 Maplewood Road, Fort Wayne.