Miami Middle School

Fort Wayne Community Schools, 8100 Amherst Drive, Fort Wayne; grades six through eight; opened 1976, the newest school building in the district

Opening: Miami Middle School opened in 1976 with Max Lake as its first principal, in the district's own throwback history, published in May 2019 with a photograph of the school's entrance. Half a century later the building still holds a distinction the district states on its Facilities Department page: Miami is the newest school Fort Wayne Community Schools has, built in 1976, in a system whose buildings average sixty years old. The school stands on Amherst Drive on the city's south side, in a district whose other middle schools were all built for an earlier Fort Wayne, and everything about Miami's record since, the renovations, the air conditioning campaigns, the staggered construction schedules, follows from being the youngest building in an old fleet.

The Name: No source found for this history documents the naming decision. The Miami name in Fort Wayne belongs first to the Miami, the Myaamia, whose town of Kekionga stood at the head of the Maumee River where the city began, and a reader will naturally connect a Fort Wayne school called Miami to that history. But no board minute, dedication program or district history found ties this school's name to that nation by decision, and the school's teams are the Indians, a name from the same era of school naming as the school itself. The connection is printed here as a question the record leaves open, not as a namesake this page can certify.

The 1972 Yearbook: One artifact argues with the district's date, and it is printed here unresolved. The Allen County Genealogical Society's school pages list a Miami Junior High School yearbook dated 1972, sixty five photographs in an alumni album from the Great Memories and History of Fort Wayne page, four years before the district says the school opened. The same pattern turned up at Shawnee, where a 1972 yearbook album also predates the district's 1975 opening. Whether these albums are mislabeled, or the Miami name served somewhere before the Amherst Drive building opened, no source found says. The district's opening date stands on two district sources; the album stands as an open conflict beside it.

Enrollment: Miami's attendance area is the district's outlier: about forty four square miles of the south side and its rural fringe, three times the territory of any other Fort Wayne middle school. In 2024 to 2025 the National Center for Education Statistics counted 496 students, with 152 in sixth grade, 165 in seventh grade and 179 in eighth grade, taught by thirty nine teachers, about thirteen students to a teacher. The count has declined about eleven percent in the most recent five years. The student body is eighty two percent minority enrollment, and between seventy three and eighty percent of its students qualify for free or reduced price lunch in the state counts of recent years.

Feeders: Miami draws from the south side elementaries, Maplewood Elementary among the documented assignments, and its students go on to Wayne High School, the pairing SchoolDigger's feeder records give for the school and the one the district's own renovation program assumes, since Wayne and Miami have been renovated in the same phases, on the same schedule, as a pair.

The Building: Miami was one of the last district schools without full air conditioning, and the 2016 referendum's second phase set aside about fifteen million dollars to finish air conditioning the remaining buildings, Miami and Blackhawk middle schools and Wayne High School named outright. The 2020 referendum's third phase then named Miami for major renovation alongside Wayne High School and Blackhawk, a one hundred thirty million dollar district program; the Journal Gazette put eighty four and a half million dollars of it at Wayne and the two middle schools, with projects staggered through 2028 and Wayne starting in 2022. Within that work, CME Construction built Miami a new office and secure entry vestibule, relocating the office and adding eight to ten private offices, the controlled front door that older school buildings were never designed to need.

Today: In 2026 Miami is an open, operating middle school of about five hundred students on Amherst Drive, still the district's newest building at fifty years old, still feeding Wayne, with its renovation staggered through the decade and its 1972 yearbook still unexplained.

Sources:

1. Fort Wayne Community Schools, throwback post, May 30, 2019, collected in Allen County Genealogical Society, Middle Schools in Allen County, Allen INGenWeb, 2026: the school opened in 1976 with Max Lake as its first principal; the same page lists the Miami Junior High School 1972 yearbook album.
2. Fort Wayne Community Schools, Facilities Department page, 2026: Miami Middle School is the district's newest school, built in 1976, and the average age of the district's schools is sixty years.
3. National Center for Education Statistics, Miami Middle School (180363000548), as republished by Public School Review: 496 students in 2024 to 2025 by grade, thirty nine teachers, the forty four square mile attendance area and minority enrollment.
4. SchoolDigger, Miami Middle School, 2026, citing Indiana Department of Education data: free and reduced lunch eligibility between 73 and 80 percent, and Wayne High School as the school's destination.
5. AroundFortWayne, December 15, 2015: the 2016 referendum Phase 2 air conditioning program naming Miami, Blackhawk and Wayne High School.
6. Waynedale News, April 24, 2020, and The Journal Gazette, March 9, 2021: the 2020 referendum Phase 3 renovations at Wayne High School, Blackhawk and Miami, eighty four and a half million dollars, staggered through 2028.
7. CME Construction, project portfolio, 2026: the Miami Middle School office and secure entry vestibule renovation.