The zoo in Granger's school life, and the zoo today

ROW 15 · VERIFIED TO NOVEMBER 2026

Granger's zoo life is a bus ride, printed at exactly that strength: the PHM schools seated in the CDP — Mary Frank, Prairie Vista, Horizon and Northpoint elementaries and Discovery Middle School, carried whole in the Schools section — have no zoo seated on this ground, and the Schools section, read whole for this run, carries no zoo or field-trip entry at all; no PHM publication reached names a Granger class's zoo trip by school and year. What is documented is the course at its two ends. At the zoo's end it is built in brick: the entry plaza's design included, in the zoo's spring 2018 magazine, “a separate entrance for field trips and group visits” — a door of their own for the busloads. Its machinery stands current in the zoo's 2026 field-trip form: a field-trip rate at twenty or more paid admissions, children 3–14 at 7 dollars, children 15–18 and chaperones at 8 dollars, teachers with ID and bus drivers free — the standing offer under which PHM's Granger classes, like every Michiana district's, ride south to Greenlawn Avenue. At the system's end, the zoo's published 2025 education figures give the scale into which a Granger class disappears: 90,920 people interacted with, 645 programs, 30,542 people reached offsite in schools and community rooms, 1,084 children in camps and classes, 70 volunteers giving 4,324 hours; Curator of Education Amanda Brunson Cruz on the November 2026 staff list. No attendance-by-school count is published and none is invented; the per-school roll is a named gap below, with PHM's newsletters and board record as its settlers.

The zoo today, verified to November 2026: 500 South Greenlawn Avenue; twenty-three acres in Potawatomi Park; city-owned, society-operated since 1 January 2014; AZA-accredited, renewed 17 September 2025, continuously since 1987, listed through September 2030; more than 400 animals, more than 56 Species Survival Plans. Executive director Josh Sisk (General Curator 2015, executive director from 2019), with Margie Anella, Jami Richard and Brunson Cruz on the November 2026 staff list. The 2026 season ran 28 March to 22 November 2026 — Frankie newly arrived, the three Andean bears together, Hadassah past her first birthday, Zoo Luminate's second run finished in June, Zoo Boo in October, a new electric train replacing the gas train of some twenty-five years, and Big Cat Tracks still rising. The largest crowds of its life and its longest accreditation run — and a founding it still states two ways, which is where a Granger reader's zoo properly ends.

Sources:

1. Schools section of this build, read whole November 2026 — the five PHM schools seated in the CDP; no zoo entry in the leg.
2. Potawatomi Zoo, Uproar, spring 2018 (the field-trip entrance); 2026 Field Trip Registration Form (potawatomizoo.org); published 2025 education figures; staff list, November 2026.
3. South Bend zoo file, article “The Zoo Today” — Tribune season preview, 26 March 2026; the zoo's published descriptions, November 2026.