Have a home improvement project idea you’ve been pracastinating on? You could hire one of the area’s many reputable contractors or you could put on a tool belt and tackle it yourself. Before tackling a project that seems foreign to you, you might try one of the many how-to clinics that area stores are now offering. You can learn everything from faux painting techniques to how to build a bird house to how to install hardwood flooring and sprinkler systems.

The clinics vary weekly and can be found online at Lowes or Home Depot. While you may not become as handy as Bob Villa, you just might save some money and learn a few tricks at that same time.

Indiana has released its high school graduation rates for 2006. Statewide 76.5 percent of students graduate in four years and 11.2 percent are classified as dropout/undetermined.

More information is online at the state’s web-site and the South Bend Tribune (permalink). 

Here are the details for area schools:

• Adams
• Clay
• Mishawaka
• Marian
• Penn
• Riley
• St. Joseph
• Washington

Schools are important. Families choose where to live based on jobs and schools, and later choose a house based on a host of other criteria such as price. I work with many people relocating their families to the South Bend Area and hear many questions about the school districts. They sometimes have encountered news articles that detail discipline problems and graduation rates or heard statements from their colleagues like “Don’t send your kids to Penn if they want to play sports.”

My standard advice is for families to visit schools and make their own determination of where they want their children educated. However this is often impractical or impossible and the families finally make their decision based on the advice they receive, true or not.

Because many people researching the South Bend Area for a potential move find this Web-site I’d like to encourage dialogue between transplanted families and the schools. I’ve sent a letter to every principal, assistant principal and associate principal of every high school in the South Bend, Mishawaka and Penn-Harris-Madison School Districts, as well as to the private high schools St. Joe and Marian. These are busy people but they are overwhelmingly responsive and dedicated. I hope to hear from many of them in the coming weeks and pledge to post their responses intact and in full on this site.

Click here to view every education tagged article in the blog and here for links to maps and statistics of area schools. If you have any questions for the schools, you can make a comment or e-mail me at nick@realst8.com and I will include it in the discussion.

It’s time once again for backpacks, pencils and three ring binders. For parents and students this also means figuring out where to catch the bus.

Transportation Hotlines:

• Penn Harris Madison Schools 574-258-9565
• South Bend Community School Corporation 574-283-7580
• Elkhart Community Schools 574-262-5695
• Goshen Community Schools 574-533-7176
• School City of Mishawaka (no school buses – for Transpo info call 574-233-2131)

Students, parents, and anyone driving near a school bus can brush up on safety rules here.

The South Bend Tribune recently reported that improving South Bend’s graduation rate was among the challenges facing new superintendent Robert Zimmerman. In a June 25th article, education reporter Michael Wanbaugh wrote “Hovering around 50 percent, the corporation’s graduation rate remains perhaps the most notable issue facing the schools and the community.”

While this statistic is striking, it differs dramatically from those reported by the Indiana Department of Education which hover around 90%.

I e-mailed the reporter enquiring about their number and was told it was calculated by dividing the number of 2004-05 graduates by the corporation’s freshman enrollment four years earlier, “which returns a graduation rate of 59 percent.”

I then e-mailed the South Bend Community Schools to ask about the discrepancy and was answered by John Ritzler, Director of Research and Evaluation. He told me graduation rates depend upon the formula used to calculate them, and that graduation rates for South Bend are comparable to other schools in the area and the state average when the same formula is used for each school.

The state is changing the method used to calculate graduation rates. The new formula tracks the progress of individual students once they enter school, rather than the percentage of seniors who graduate. The state estimates Indiana will have a 71% graduation rate when calculated by the new method.

Taken together, these numbers reveal that you shouldn’t rely too much on any one source or statistic. The best way to learn about a school is still to visit it and talk with the teachers and administration. Statistics are useful, but they can be misleading and they can miss the point. A personal visit to a school will tell you more about it than all the numbers you can find on the Web.

For further information on South Bend schools, including maps and homepages, visit http://www.realst8.com/SouthBendSchools.html.

Wikipedia reports St. Joseph County had 84,979 residents under the age of 18 in the year 2000. The county contains at least 85 schools these children could attend. Recent legislation, including the controversial “No Child Left Behind Act,” has increased the amount of information available about these schools on-line. Test scores, enrollment and household information, teacher details are available from the state department of education.
For detailed information in a convenient Google Map format, check out the new Realst8.com school district guides:

South Bend Community School Corporation
School City of Mishawaka
Penn-Harris-Madison School Corporation
Private Schools in St. Joseph County

In response to a recent inquiry, I have been researching apartments in the Penn-Harris-Madison School District. I learned there are no apartment complexes within the boundaries of the Northpoint elementary school district. However, there are several apartments in the PHM school district, mostly feeding into the Walt Disney Elementary, Schmucker Middle and Penn High schools. Here is a sneak peak of our map of the PHM schools, and the names of a few apartment complexes in the area:

Indian Lakes
5726 Seneca Dr, Mishawaka, IN
574-277-6541

Spring Lake (Cleveland & 23)
574-271-9387

Summer Place Apartments
825 Summer Place Ln
Granger, IN 46530
574-273-9600

Runaway Bay
302 Runaway Bay Circle, Mishawaka, IN 46545
574-256-1350