The reorganization: Penn-Harris-Madison, 1962 and 1963

THE TOWNSHIP CENTURY ENDS · THE FORMATION YEAR PRINTED IN CONFLICT, AS THE RECORD GIVES IT

Indiana's 1959 school reorganization law ended the trustee's century, and on this ground it ended in two steps that the record dates two ways. Penn High School's history states the sequence: "The 1962 merger of Penn and Harris Townships expanded the school system. The following year, Madison Township was also incorporated, creating today's Penn-Harris-Madison School district." Other carriers of the corporation's identity date the formation simply to 1963 — the district "has been serving students in eastern St. Joseph County since 1963." Both print: a two-stage reorganization, Penn and Harris in 1962 and Madison in 1963, is the course; which single year a source calls "formation" depends on which stage it counts. The new corporation — named for the three easternmost townships of the county — took in all of Osceola, and the Ball State study of November 1963 is the photograph of what it inherited: the Harris School (1928, grades 1–3) and Mary Frank (1958, grades 4–8) as companions in Harris Township; Kennedy (1916, addition 1947, grades 5–8) and Elsie Rogers (1954, addition 1960, grades 1–6) as companions; the Boner and Fulmer schools (both 1926, grades 1–4) feeding Elm Road (1951, grades 5–8) on its 33-acre site; Madison School (1924, gymnasium addition 1938), still teaching grades 1–12 in the study's snapshot, with all Madison high-school students to attend Penn High School from September 1964; and at Osceola, the pair this section follows — the Osceola School of 1914 and the Moran School of 1951. The bridge into the new order was built by the old one: when Mishawaka High School announced in 1955 that it would stop accepting Penn Township students from 1959, it was Penn Township Trustee Vernon Freed who created the planning team for a township high school — the act that produced Penn High School, opened September 1, 1958, before the corporation itself existed (the ladder entry below). No source reached describes, in words, how Penn Township's trustee administered the Osceola schools in the last years before the merger; the inherited-buildings picture above is as far as the retrieved record goes, and the trustee-era administrative detail rides the closing roll with the corporation's own records as its settler.

Sources:

1. Wikipedia, "Penn High School" (the school's history): the 1962 Penn–Harris merger and Madison's incorporation the following year.
2. Penn-Harris-Madison School Corporation descriptions (NCES district description and carriers): "formed through consolidation in 1963" / "serving students since 1963" — printed in conflict with the two-stage account.
3. Ball State Teachers College study (November 25, 1963): the inherited buildings, school by school, as listed.