Robert C. Harris Elementary School

Fort Wayne Community Schools, 4501 Thorngate Drive, Fort Wayne; kindergarten through fifth grade; the Patriots, in red and white; built in 1968, dedicated in 1969, and named for a principal who was also an inventor

The Namesake: Robert C. Harris came to Fort Wayne Community Schools in 1917, and the district set him to work at Central High School. One caution belongs in the record: the school's own history page says he joined as a physics teacher, while a district history post of 2020 remembers him as a math teacher at Central. Both wordings are the district's, and this page prints both rather than choose. What is documented either way is the career that followed. Before Fort Wayne he had taught or served as principal in Crawfordsville, Loogootee, Indianapolis and Puerto Rico. In 1922 he became the first principal of the new South Side High School, and after four years there he moved to the principalship of James H. Smart School, which he held until his retirement in 1946. The second principal of South Side was R. Nelson Snider; Fort Wayne eventually named an elementary school for the first and a high school for the second.

The Inventor: Harris worked with his hands as well as his schools. He wrote his own mathematics curriculum for elementary and high school students, and the state of Indiana adopted his high school curriculum for several years. He took out his first patent in 1918, a year after he arrived in Fort Wayne, and the inventions kept coming: a visual coin counter, an alphabetizer, model railroad devices. The school's history page calls his most important invention an electric impulse generator, which engineers at Magnavox developed into the trigger device used to fire bazookas and other rocket launching guns. A man who spent his days running schools spent his spare hours building the ancestor of a weapon's trigger; the school on Thorngate Drive is named for both halves of him.

The Building: Harris Elementary was built in 1968 on Thorngate Drive, in the northeast growth of the city, and a district photograph shows it under construction that year, steel up and walls unfinished. It opened in 1968 and was dedicated in 1969, when the school song was "This Land Is Your Land." The district counts it among the many schools built in the 1960s to meet the needs of the growing Baby Boomer generation. From its early years the school organized itself as an academy community, with written agreements between the school and parents supporting high standards of academic effort and conduct, and a parent teacher association the school itself describes as very involved.

Enrollment: The federal record opens on a full suburban school. The National Center for Education Statistics counted four hundred eighty five students at Harris in 1988, all but a handful of them White, and the count peaked at five hundred forty two in 1992 and again in 2000. It has since come down by a third: three hundred thirty four students in 2024 and three hundred sixty in 2025, taught by twenty nine teachers, about twelve students to a teacher. The school's makeup turned over as it shrank. In 2025 White students are forty four percent of Harris, Black students twenty three percent, and Hispanic students and students of two or more races most of the rest. Free or discounted lunch eligibility, eight percent in 1988, stands at sixty two percent in 2025, and the district spends $15,788 per student here, the sixth highest figure among its elementary schools.

Today: In 2026 Harris is an open, operating elementary school of about three hundred sixty students on Thorngate Drive, the Patriots, in Board of School Trustees District 2. Its students feed into Lane Middle School and Snider High School. SchoolDigger, working from state test data, ranks it eighth among the district's thirty one ranked elementary schools in 2025, a middle standing for a school whose namesake, a century ago, was writing the math books other Indiana schools taught from.

Sources:

1. Harris Elementary School, Our History page, harris.fortwayneschools.org, 2026: named for Robert C. Harris, first principal of South Side High School in 1922; joined FWCS in 1917 as a physics teacher at Central High School; earlier service in Crawfordsville, Loogootee, Indianapolis and Puerto Rico; principal of James H. Smart School until his retirement in 1946; his state adopted math curriculum; his first patent in 1918 and the inventions, including the electric impulse generator developed by Magnavox engineers; Harris Elementary built in 1968; the academy community and written parent agreements; feeders Lane Middle School and Snider High School; Board District 2.
2. Fort Wayne Community Schools, Facebook posts, September 22, 2016, January 10, 2019 and September 24, 2020, collected in Allen County Genealogical Society, Elementary Schools in Allen County, Indiana, Allen INGenWeb, 2026: the school under construction in 1968; opened in 1968 on Thorngate Drive, with "This Land Is Your Land" as the school song at the dedication in 1969; one of many schools built in the 1960s for the Baby Boomer generation; the 2020 post's wording that Harris started his career as a math teacher at Central High School.
3. Allen County Genealogical Society, High Schools in Allen County, Indiana, Allen INGenWeb, 2026: Robert C. Harris principal of South Side from 1922 to 1926 and R. Nelson Snider from 1926 to 1963, with an elementary school and a high school named for them respectively.
4. National Center for Education Statistics, Robert C Harris Elementary School (180363000558), as republished by SchoolDigger: enrollment of 485 in 1988, peak 542 in 1992 and 2000, 334 in 2024 and 360 in 2025, twenty nine teachers, the 2025 composition, and free or discounted lunch eligibility of 8.2 percent in 1988 and 61.9 percent in 2025.
5. SchoolDigger, Robert C Harris Elementary School, 2026, from Indiana Department of Education data: average spending of $15,788 per student and a rank of 535th of 1,005 Indiana elementary schools in 2025, eighth among the district's ranked elementary schools.
6. Prep Sportswear, Robert C Harris Elementary School store, 2026: the Patriots, in red and white.