Mishawaka Schools and Colleges: One City, Several Systems, a Single Web

Schools · one city, several systems, a single web

Mishawaka was never schooled by one system. The public corporation that grew out of an 1834 subscription school and the Catholic parish schools that grew out of St. Joseph's vestry were built in the same decades, on the same streets, often by the same families' taxes and tuition; a Missionary Church college planted itself on the city's east side in 1947; the diocese raised a regional high school across from the Franciscan motherhouse in 1964; and since 1958 a second public district, seated in Penn Township, has schooled the city's east side under a Mishawaka mailing address. The thread that ties the web together is staffing. Holy Cross priests taught the first Catholic classes; Poor Handmaids of Jesus Christ sisters staffed the mother parish's school for generations; the Franciscan sisters of the Dragoon Trail motherhouse staffed Marian and Queen of Peace; and the web's modern turns — a high school's doors closing in 1970 for want of sisters, three parish schools becoming one in 2011 — follow from that thread as much as from money or enrollment. This section tells the web as one story, school by school, at the size the record gives each. Where the sources disagree, both statements stand in the entry. Where a fact could not be verified, it is left out.