The Harris School at Granger: the township's consolidated school

1928–1960s · erected 1928; retirement recommended 1963

By 1963 the Harris School was the older half of a two-building attendance center, and the survey that describes it also pronounced its sentence: Ball State Teachers College's cooperative study of the new Penn-Harris-Madison corporation (November 25, 1963), read first-hand, tabulates the buildings the reorganization inherited. The Harris School at Granger was erected in 1928 — Harris Township's consolidated school, the building the district era built to replace its one-room districts on this ground. It stood on three acres: a brick building of two floors and a basement, eight classrooms, carrying grades 1–3 with a rated capacity of 240 and 217 children actually housed. The cafeteria and kitchen were in the basement. One of its rooms held the new corporation's only kindergarten, and that only by rental — a privately operated kindergarten renting a classroom, in a district that then ran no kindergartens of its own. The study's verdict on the building is printed in its table in three words: "Retire from service." The younger half of the center, the Mary Frank School of 1958, was rated adequate in the same table; the 1928 building was not.

Named gap — the building's end: the study's recommendation is dated November 1963; the record does not fix the year the Harris School actually closed, what use the corporation made of the building afterward, or whether it stands. The gap is carried with its settlers: the Penn-Harris-Madison facilities record and the board minutes of the 1960s–1980s; the South Bend Tribune's archive for the closure and any sale or demolition; and the county assessor's parcel record for the site. What is certain is the succession of function: the township's children who would have filled the 1928 building's eight rooms are the children of Mary Frank, Prairie Vista, Horizon, and Northpoint today.

Sources:

1. Ball State Teachers College, A Cooperative Study of Organizational, Building, and Financial Needs of Penn-Harris-Madison School Corporation, November 25, 1963 — buildings table and building descriptions (Harris School, erected 1928; three acres; eight classrooms; grades 1–3; capacity 240; housed 217; basement cafeteria and kitchen; the rented private kindergarten; the verdict "Retire from service"), read first-hand via the Ball State University Digital Media Repository.
2. The Story of Granger section leg of this build (the attendance-center summary), cross-referenced.