The Parish Grade Schools as They Stand, and the Closing Wave

2005 – present

The present roster: The diocese's South Bend elementary schools, as the state's and the diocese's current lists carry them, are eleven. Christ the King School stands at 52473 State Road 933, on the city's north edge; Corpus Christi School at 2817 Corpus Christi Drive; Holy Cross School at 1020 Wilber Street; Holy Family School at 56407 Mayflower Road; Our Lady of Hungary School on the south side; St. Adalbert School at 519 South Olive Street, the Polish parish's school; St. Anthony de Padua School at 2310 East Jefferson Boulevard; St. John the Baptist School at 3616 St. Johns Way, its parish school dated to 1893 in current directories, though the school’s own account dates its founding to 1956, and the school’s account governs; Saint Joseph Grade School at 216 North Hill Street, the school of 1854 carried above; St. Jude School; and St. Matthew Cathedral School at 1015 East Dayton Street. With Saint Joseph High School downtown, these are the Catholic schools of South Bend as they stand.

A claim not carried: Directory copy for Holy Cross School claims for it the standing of the oldest Catholic elementary school in Indiana. The claim cannot stand against Saint Joseph Grade School's documented founding in 1854, in this same city, and it is not carried; Holy Cross stands in the roster on its own parish record.

The closing wave: The roster was longer. The documented closing of the modern wave is St. Mary of the Assumption's: the German parish's school, opened in the sacristy in 1884, closed in June 2005 with seventy-three students in kindergarten through eighth grade, the cost of maintaining the building and the low enrollment given as the reasons — an end, the report noted, to more than a hundred years of schooling at the parish. The older parish schools of the founding generation — St. Patrick's and the St. Hedwig's grade school among them — likewise do not appear on the modern roster; their individual closing dates are not carried in the sources read for this section, and the contraction is recorded here at the size the record supports: a system of parish schools that once stood beside nearly every Catholic church in the city, standing now at eleven elementary schools and one high school.

Sources:

1. Indiana Department of Education, Indiana GPS school directory — the diocese's South Bend schools and their grade spans as currently listed.
2. Today's Catholic, 6 March 2019 — the diocese's Light of Learning roster naming the South Bend-area schools: Christ the King, Corpus Christi, Holy Cross, Holy Family, Our Lady of Hungary, St. Adalbert, St. Anthony de Padua, St. John the Baptist, St. Joseph, St. Jude and St. Matthew Cathedral, with Saint Joseph High School.
3. Current school directories (county private-school listings) — the addresses as printed, Holy Cross at 1020 Wilber Street, St. Adalbert at 519 South Olive Street, St. John the Baptist at 3616 St. Johns Way with its school dated 1893 (the school’s own account: 1956), and the Holy Cross "oldest in Indiana" claim examined and not carried.
4. WSBT television report, June 2005, as preserved in the St. Joseph County parish records — the closing of St. Mary of the Assumption School, its seventy-three students, and its stated reasons.