New Haven Intermediate School

New Haven; East Allen County Schools; opened 2019; grades 3 to 6, between New Haven Primary and New Haven Junior High School; 919 Homestead Drive

The second rung: New Haven Intermediate School is the second rung of New Haven's ladder, the school the whole attendance area passes through between childhood's first school and the junior high. Its own improvement plan names the rungs in order: New Haven Primary, New Haven Intermediate, New Haven Junior High and New Haven High School, and it adds the loyalty the ladder shares: "We are all Bulldogs and all school colors are purple and gold." The junior high and high school stand in their own entry in this section; this is the intermediate school's own record, the newest building in the New Haven set.

The building of 2019: The school's own plan states it plainly: "The school, which opened in 2019, is a two story 150,000 square foot building," and the district's facilities accounting agrees, dating the building's original construction to 2019, the latest date in the corporation's list. Before the building stood, New Haven's middle grades were housed across town: New Haven Middle School, at 900 Prospect Avenue, taught grades six through eight until the transition. In May 2019, as WANE reported at the time, the middle school building was being torn down; grades seven and eight moved to the high school, into the junior high section recently added there, and the sixth grade moved down into the new intermediate building, along with grades three, four and five.

The reconfiguration: The plan describes what the move made: the school "was reconfigured from an elementary school serving students in grades 3-5 to an intermediate school, serving students in grades 3-6 beginning with the 2019-20 school year." The institution, on its own telling, is older than its building: an elementary school for the middle grades stood behind the present intermediate school, and 2019 joined a new plant and a new grade span in one motion. Where that earlier elementary school was housed, the sources consulted do not say, and the want is printed rather than filled.

The older series: One measure of the school runs far behind the building. The federal enrollment series republished by the directories under this school's name and federal identity opens in the late 1980s, counting four hundred forty-five students in 1988, and it runs unbroken to six hundred seven students in 2025, distributed as one hundred fifty-seven third graders, one hundred forty-five fourth graders, one hundred fifty-five fifth graders and one hundred fifty sixth graders. The school's own plan counts five hundred eighty-three students in September 2023. The early decades of the series belong to the school's pre-2019 form by the directories' reckoning, but no source consulted joins those counts to a building or a grade span, and this entry prints the series as it stands, the joining left for a pass that can document it.

The students: The plan's September 2023 profile gives the school's company: sixty-nine percent White, eleven percent African American, nine percent Hispanic, nine percent multiracial and two percent Asian students; sixty-seven and seven tenths percent qualified for free or reduced lunch; a quarter of the students, twenty-five and nine tenths percent, have a disability, and the building houses one of the district's two special needs and emotionally disabled programs. In the spring of 2023 the school was designated a Family Friendly School once again, one of only two schools in Allen County so named; the other was its own feeder, New Haven Primary.

People: Mandy Baker is the principal named on the school's own improvement plan for 2023-24, the district document that carries this entry's spine, and she is named here on it. The commercial directories carry a different name for the office; under this history's rule a school's principal is not named on a commercial listing alone, and the directories' name is not printed.

Sources:

1. New Haven Intermediate School, School Improvement Plan 2023-2026 (East Allen County Schools), 2023-24: Principal Mandy Baker; the school opened in 2019, a two story building of 150,000 square feet; the reconfiguration from an elementary school serving grades 3 to 5 to an intermediate school serving grades 3 to 6 from 2019-20; the feeder pattern and the four named rungs; the Bulldogs and the purple and gold; the September 2023 enrollment of 583 and its composition; the special needs and emotionally disabled program; and the Family Friendly School designation of spring 2023
2. East Allen County Schools, board hearing and facility plan document, July 9, 2024: New Haven Intermediate dated 2019 by original construction
3. Tony Sandleben, WANE, May 10, 2019, as cited in the published accounts of East Allen County Schools and of New Haven, Indiana: the middle school torn down in the transition, grades 7 and 8 moving to the high school's junior high section and grade 6 to the new intermediate building
4. SchoolDigger and Public School Review, National Center for Education Statistics data for New Haven Intermediate School, school ID 180285000350: the series from the late 1980s, 445 students in 1988 and 607 in 2025, with the 2025 grade distribution; and the directory record of New Haven Middle School, 900 Prospect Avenue, closed in the transition