Wayne New Tech

Fort Wayne Community Schools, housed at Wayne High School, 9100 Winchester Road; grades nine through twelve; opened in August 2009 as a school within a school

Origins: Wayne New Tech began as an answer to a workforce question. Fort Wayne business leaders, watching employers arrive who could not find workers with higher level science, technology, engineering and math skills, joined local educators to win a Lilly grant from the State of Indiana to study high school teaching methods around the country. The study ended in a new kind of classroom at Wayne. The academy opened in August 2009 with space for up to one hundred freshmen from throughout the district, carved out of a gymnasium and other space inside Wayne High School. Founding director Liz Bryan remembered the reality as smaller: when we first opened in 2009, she said, we barely had ninety one students.

The Model: The academy belongs to the New Tech Network, a national nonprofit that designs schools around four pillars: outcomes that matter, teaching that engages, culture that empowers, and technology that enables. At Wayne the teaching pillar carries the weight. Students learn in a small learning community where project based learning drives instruction. They work in groups on real world problems, then present their findings to community members and local partners. The district judges that work on learning outcomes named knowledge and thinking, oral communication, written communication and agency. The network platform is called Echo, and the culture has its own motto on the school page: culture over content. Fort Wayne Metals helped write the original outcomes, and AccuGear offered engineering internships to graduating seniors.

A School Within a School: Wayne New Tech has never had a building of its own, and that is the design, not a compromise. Wayne High School opened on Winchester Road in 1972 and remains the host. New Tech students take their curriculum inside the academy, take part in the wider life of the host school, and graduate as Wayne Generals. The academy grew by renovation, a few rooms at a time. A 2010 project turned two classrooms and a science area into New Tech rooms, and a larger 2011 project added four more classrooms. The recent renovation of the whole campus, finished in its main phases in 2024 with a new dining space opening in the fall of 2025, gave the academy an entrance of its own, off the same building it has always shared.

Growth: Growth came one freshman class at a time. A second class of one hundred arrived in the fall of 2010, while the first class moved up to sophomore year. By its fifth year the academy kept a waiting list and admitted students by lottery, and siblings of earlier students were applying. The district now describes the academy as home to four hundred students in grades nine through twelve. They sit inside a host school of 1,398 students in 2024 to 2025, which is why the federal directory carries one record for Winchester Road, under Wayne High School, and no separate count for the academy.

Recognition: The network noticed early. After one year the academy was named a demonstration site, a school others could model a program on, and its six teachers were named exemplary teachers. Bryan received the network Susan Schilling Legacy Award in 2016. The strongest piece of student work in the record is Instruments of Hope, built by teachers Jeff Roberts and Josh Smith in 2018 to 2019 around the question of how music is used to save or to persecute. Students worked with the Jewish Federation of Fort Wayne and the Fort Wayne Philharmonic, made art from donated instruments, and filmed a documentary. It won the network Best in Network Award in 2020.

Today: The academy sits at the end of a full pathway. Bunche Montessori and Towles Intermediate lead into Wayne New Tech, and New Tech students in the Geocad class return the favor each October, building three dimensional puzzles for Bunche kindergartners. Inside Wayne, students choose pathways in civic arts, computer science, interactive media, biomedical sciences and engineering, and finish a capstone project in the third year for an audience from the field. Emily Oberlin, the second director from 2016, now serves as principal of Wayne High School itself. Helen Foster directs the academy in 2026, leading a program that began with ninety one freshmen in borrowed rooms and now greets its students at a door of its own.

Sources:

1. The Waynedale News, March 18, 2009, and Fort Wayne Community Schools board minutes, 2009 to 2011: the August 2009 opening and the classroom renovations.
2. Getting Smart, May 29, 2014: Liz Bryan on the Lilly grant, the ninety one first students, Fort Wayne Metals and AccuGear.
3. Fort Wayne Community Schools, New Tech Academy and Academics pages, crawled 2026: the school within a school, four hundred students, pathways and outcomes.
4. New Tech Network, Spotlight School profile and Best in Network release, May 27, 2020: the model and Instruments of Hope.
5. Fort Wayne Community Schools press release, June 17, 2010, and PRWeb, July 14, 2016: the demonstration site honor and the Susan Schilling Legacy Award.
6. National Center for Education Statistics, Wayne High School (180363000568): 1,398 students at the host school, 2024 to 2025.
7. Design Collaborative and The Waynedale News, March 31, 2023: the campus renovation and the academy entrance.