Barker Middle School

Located at 319 E Barker Rd, in Michigan City, Indiana, Barker Middle School is a modestly sized intermediate school that instructs 390 students (grades 7 through 8), one of the schools within Michigan City Area Schools. That puts it 34% leaner than the typical public school in Indiana, which averages around 594 students.

Michigan City Area Schools runs 13 schools in total, collectively educating 5,030 students. Barker Middle School is one of those campuses.

On the student-mix side, Barker Middle School reports that the most-represented group is White (41%), with the rest of the student body spread across multiple groups. Beyond that, the school records 34% Black, 14% Hispanic, 10% multiracial. By comparison, LaPorte County as a whole is about 78% White, so the school skews considerably less White than its surroundings.

Looking at school resources, Staff filings list 34 full-time-equivalent teachers, which works out to roughly 11.6:1 students per teacher. That figure is tighter than the state norm's 15.6:1 average. Around 69% of the student body qualifies for free or reduced-price meals, a commonly cited indicator of low-income enrollment. That share is higher than LaPorte County's rate of about 50%.

With demographic context factored in, Barker Middle School performs roughly as the BeatsExpectations model predicts for a school with this FRL share. The predicted value is around 26.6%, the actual is 21.0%, a residual of -5.5 points.

In the surrounding community, the surrounding county (LaPorte County) records that the typical household earns roughly $71,055 per year, about 23% of the adult population holds a bachelor's degree or above, and census figures put the poverty rate at about 9%. Across LaPorte County's 38 public schools (combined enrollment of about 15,515 students), Barker Middle School is one campus in the mix.

Nearest neighbor: Edgewood Elementary School, around 0.4 miles off. 8 of the 8 nearest public schools sit inside a five-mile radius. On composite proficiency, Barker Middle School comes 6th of 6 in the immediate cluster, beneath the nearby-schools average of 30.4%.

Geographically, the school is in an inner-city area.

Five-year trend. Barker Middle School's enrollment has contracted 5% since 2018, when it stood at 410 (now 390). Over the same period, the Black share fell from 39% to 34%. The student-to-teacher ratio narrowed from 12.8:1 in 2018 to 11.6:1 today.

In the discussion threads here, the page collects discussion, questions, and updates around science fair prep, picture-day reminders, and bus-route questions. Anyone with firsthand experience at this school can post or comment.