Whitney Young Early Childhood Center

Fort Wayne Community Schools, 1026 East Pontiac Street, Fort Wayne; an arts magnet early childhood center, prekindergarten and kindergarten; built in 1972 and named for Whitney M. Young Jr.

The Namesake: The school carries the name of Whitney M. Young Jr., in the district's own words "an educator and civil rights leader." The district's history page tells why the name fits a school: Young became president of the National Urban League at the age of forty and led it through the civil rights years, President Johnson awarded him the Medal of Freedom in 1968, and before the national work he had been dean of social work at Atlanta University. The building on Pontiac Street was raised four years after the medal, and the district put his name on its new southeast side elementary school.

The Building: "The school was built in 1972," the district's history page says, and it opened as Young Elementary School, a neighborhood elementary on the city's southeast side. The district photographed it in 1977, five years in: a brick elementary school of its period, photographed as Young Elementary School. Nothing in the district's published account gives its architect or a dedication day, and the building's interest lies less in its raising than in what the district decided, two years after that photograph, to do inside it.

The Magnet Years: In 1979 Young became the district's first fine arts magnet school. The News-Sentinel's retrospective on the city's 1970s tells the moment plainly: early in 1979 principals were appointed for the kindergarten through fifth grade facility at Young School and for the grades six to eight school at Memorial Park, "and Fort Wayne's first two magnet schools were born." The arts program begun here in 1979 expanded in 1981 to Weisser Park Elementary, and for a time the two schools were considered one school with two sites, before separating in the 1990s. Young kept the youngest end of the idea. In 2001 the school became an early childhood center, taking only prekindergarten and kindergarten, and in its history page's words it "embraced the Reggio Emilia philosophy" in the change, the Italian approach that treats the young child as a capable learner and the classroom itself as a teacher. The center is fully accredited by the National Association for the Education of Young Children, runs an English language learner program, and takes its students from across the district, with no geographic boundary.

The Federal Record: The federal record consulted runs from the early childhood era, and it counts a small school by design: two hundred eighteen students in the profile republished by Public School Review, one hundred in prekindergarten and one hundred eighteen in kindergarten; two hundred fifteen students with sixteen teachers in 2024 to 2025. The state's Title I reporting counted two hundred eight enrolled in 2023, with a poverty rate of 56.25 percent. The elementary school that stood here before 2001 taught far more children than the center does; its numbers belong to an earlier federal record that this wave did not capture, and none are printed here.

Today: In 2025 the district reunited Young with Weisser Park, and the two campuses again operate as one unified school community, the youngest children here on Pontiac Street and the first through fifth grades on Colerick Street, feeding on to Memorial Park Middle School and South Side High School from the district's Board District 4. One district page now lists the school as Whitney Young STEAM Early Childhood, while the school's own history page tells the arts magnet story it has told for years; both tellings stand in the district's name, and they are printed here together. The school that taught Fort Wayne what a magnet school was now teaches four and five year olds, and it still draws them from the whole city.

Sources:

1. Whitney Young Early Childhood Center, Our History page, young.fortwayneschools.org, 2026: the naming for Whitney M. Young Jr. and the district's account of him; the building of 1972; the arts magnet program begun in 1979 and expanded to Weisser Park in 1981; the conversion to an early childhood center in 2001 and the Reggio Emilia philosophy; accreditation by the National Association for the Education of Young Children; Board of School Trustees District 4; the feeders, Weisser Park Elementary School, Memorial Park Middle School and South Side High School.
2. Allen County Genealogical Society, Elementary Schools in Allen County, Indiana, Allen INGenWeb, 2026: the district photograph of the school in 1977, posted June 14, 2018, captioned as two years before it became the district's first fine arts magnet school, when it was known as Young Elementary School.
3. News-Sentinel, Fort Wayne in the 1970s retrospective, egen.fortwayne.com: the magnet appointments of early 1979 at Young School and Memorial Park, and the birth of the city's first two magnet schools.
4. Weisser Park Elementary School, About Us page, weisserpark.fortwayneschools.org, 2026: the separation of the two schools in the 1990s and their reunification in 2025 as one unified school community across two campuses.
5. National Center for Education Statistics, Whitney M Young Early Childhood (180363001541), as republished by Public School Review: 218 students, 100 in prekindergarten and 118 in kindergarten.
6. National Center for Education Statistics, 2024 to 2025, as republished by NeighborhoodScout: 215 students and 16 teachers; a magnet school.
7. Indiana Department of Education, Title I school export, printed March 2, 2023: school 0241, 208 students enrolled, prekindergarten through kindergarten, a poverty rate of 56.25 percent.
8. Fort Wayne Community Schools, Pre-K page, fortwayneschools.org, 2026: the school listed among the district's magnet programs as Whitney Young STEAM Early Childhood.