The middle years: Main Junior High, Battell Junior High, and John Young

1924–present · grades seven and eight, three buildings

Main Junior High: When the high school moved east in 1924, its 1911 building on Lincolnway West became Main Junior High School, holding grades seven and eight for roughly fifty years. Its feeders in the 1968 record were Battell, Mary Phillips, LaSalle and Bingham, and by 1930 Battell also carried junior-high grades of its own — the two schools fielded junior-high teams against each other in the Enterprise's sports pages of that year. Main's school life ended in the 1970s, and the building's second life is documented by the city itself: sold to the Mishawaka Furniture Store in the 1970s, bought back by the City of Mishawaka in 2009, and converted to thirty-two senior apartments, opened in December 2012 — the city's own release of 4 December 2012 marks the conversion. The 1911 high school thus stands yet, housing the generation that once studied in it.

John Young: The corporation's middle school since the 1970s is John J. Young Middle School, at 1801 North Main Street, holding the whole district's grades seven and eight; the corporation's capital inventory dates its building's occupation to 1973 — the move that closed Main Junior High's course. Its September 2016 enrollment was 730, a figure the filing notes includes the Young Adult Services students; the federal school directory's recent count is 709, down about eleven percent across five years from 776 in 2001. Its teams are the Jaguars. Sixth-graders remain in the corporation's elementary schools, though its wrestlers may compete with John Young's team — a small, current fact of the school's own pages that shows the middle school's place as the single passage between the elementary city and the high school.

The freshmen's exile: The middle schools also carried the high school's overflow in living memory: from 1976 to 1984, during the high school's phased renovation, Mishawaka's freshmen attended the middle schools — a whole cohort's passage through John Young's era that the high school's own history preserves.

Sources:

1. City of Mishawaka, release on the Main School senior-apartment conversion, 4 December 2012.
2. School City of Mishawaka, 2016 referendum and capital filing (in.gov).
3. National Center for Education Statistics, John J. Young Middle School directory record and enrollment trend.
4. Mishawaka High School, "History of Mishawaka High School," the school's own history page.