Woodlan Elementary School

Woodburn; East Allen County Schools; created 2014; kindergarten to grade 6 on the Woodlan K-12 campus; 17117 Woodburn Road

The created school: Woodlan Elementary School is the youngest school in Woodburn and one of the few in this section that can date its own creation to a sentence. Its improvement plan states it twice over, in the plan revised in 2021 and again in the revision of 2023: "Woodlan Elementary School was created at the beginning of the 2014-2015 school year as a result of the East Allen County School's redesign plan." The redesign that closed schools elsewhere in East Allen built one here, gathering Woodburn's youngest children into a single school for the first time: kindergarten through sixth grade under one roof at 17117 Woodburn Road, beside Woodlan Junior/Senior High School, whose own entry in this section carries the older story of the 1959 township venture that the elementary school now stands next to.

The joined plant: The plan describes the building the creation made, and it is two buildings in one act. Kindergarten through third grade are located in a newly built wing; fourth through sixth grades are in a renovated portion of the original Junior/Senior High building, the 1959 plant opened up and remade for small children. "This newly designed building created a K-12 campus," the plan says, and the district's facilities accounting dates the elementary school's original construction to 2014, the wing's year. A six year old and a seventeen year old now attend the same campus on Woodburn Road, the full run of a Woodburn education on one piece of ground.

The schools it gathered: Before 2014, Woodburn's elementary grades were split between two schools. Woodlan Primary School, at 23005 Woodburn Road across the town, taught kindergarten through third grade; Woodlan Intermediate School, at 17215 Woodburn Road on the high school's own campus, taught fourth through sixth. The new school gathered both, and the district's capital accounts record the disposal that followed: the sale of the Woodburn Elementary property in 2016. One seam in the record will not close neatly. The directories record Woodlan Primary School as closed in 2015, a full year after the elementary school's creation in the fall of 2014, and no source consulted explains the overlap year, whether the old primary's last classes finished out their building while the new school opened, or the directories' year is simply the record's lag. The overlap is printed here unresolved, as the record gives it.

The school today: The federal series opens with the school, counting two hundred forty-two students in 2014, a first figure well below the school's settled size and printed as the series gives it, and it reaches five hundred seventy-two students in 2025, taught by about thirty-four teachers. The attendance zone is the district's rural northeast, about one hundred twenty-nine square miles of Maumee and Milan township farm country, against forty-seven and a half square miles for Leo Elementary at the district's other end. In the directories' own reckoning, SchoolDigger's rankings for 2025 place Woodlan Elementary first among the district's ranked elementary schools; the ranking is a commercial directory's measure and is printed as such, no more.

People and marks: G. Michael Chen is the principal named on the school's improvement plan for 2021-22, and he was the school's first principal on the sources reached: the school's newsletter of December 2014, its first semester, is signed by Michael Chen as Woodlan Elementary's principal. No later holder of the office is named in a school or district source consulted, and none is printed. The school's own handbook for 2025-26 gives its teams their name, the Warriors, the mark the elementary shares with the high school it stands beside.

Sources:

1. Woodlan Elementary School, School Improvement Plan (East Allen County Schools), revised September 2021 and October 2, 2023: the school created at the beginning of the 2014-2015 school year as a result of the redesign plan; kindergarten through third grade in the newly built wing and grades 4 to 6 in the renovated portion of the original Junior/Senior High building; the K-12 campus passage; and Principal G. Michael Chen in the 2021-22 plan
2. Woodlan Elementary School newsletter, December 2014 (East Allen County Schools): Michael Chen signing as the school's principal in its first semester
3. East Allen County Schools, board hearing and facility plan document, July 9, 2024: Woodlan Elementary dated 2014 by original construction; and East Allen County Schools, capital projects and budget planning, July 16, 2019: the sale of the Woodburn Elementary property in 2016
4. Public School Review and SchoolDigger, National Center for Education Statistics data for Woodlan Elementary School, school ID 180285002514: the series opening at 242 students in 2014 and reaching 572 in 2025, the attendance zone of about 129.3 square miles, and the directory ranking for 2025; and the directory record of Woodlan Primary School, 23005 Woodburn Road, closed 2015
5. Woodlan Elementary School, Student Parent Handbook 2025-2026 (East Allen County Schools): the Warriors