Bittersweet Elementary School

Bittersweet Elementary School, a reasonably sized elementary school in Mishawaka, Indiana, part of Penn-Harris-Madison School Corp, teaches 494 students, covering grades pre-K through 5.

Penn-Harris-Madison School Corp comprises 15 schools with combined enrollment of 11,329 students; Bittersweet Elementary School is among them.

In terms of who attends, Bittersweet Elementary School logs that the student body is overwhelmingly White (80%). Other groups include 8% Black, 5% Hispanic, 5% multiracial. The wider county runs roughly 71% White, putting the school's mix meaningfully more White than the area baseline.

Looking at school resources, The school currently runs with 23 full-time-equivalent teachers, for a student-teacher ratio near 21.5:1. That figure is higher than the state norm's 15.5:1 average. Roughly 34% of students at Bittersweet Elementary School qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, a commonly cited indicator of low-income enrollment. Set against St. Joseph County (around 46%), the school's rate is somewhat below typical.

With demographic context factored in, Bittersweet Elementary School sits in the top 10% of Indiana schools after the BeatsExpectations adjustment. Predicted proficiency for the school's FRL share is roughly 51.5%; actual is 65.7%, +14.3 points clear of the demographic baseline.

Across the wider county, the surrounding county (St. Joseph County) shows that the typical household earns roughly $66,868 per year, roughly 34% of adults have completed at least a four-year degree, and the poverty rate sits near 9%. In all, St. Joseph County runs 73 public schools (combined enrollment of about 35,614 students), of which Bittersweet Elementary School is one.

Nearest neighbor: Penn High School, around 0.3 miles off. Within five miles, there are 8 other public schools. On composite proficiency, Bittersweet Elementary School comes 1st of 7 in the immediate cluster, ahead of the nearby-schools average of 49.0%.

The school occupies a commuter-belt site.

Over the past 7-year window. Over the past 7-year window, the student count declined 10%: 548 students in 2018 compared to 494 in 2025. Over the same period, the White share ticked down from 89% to 80%. Class-load math has narrowed: from 26.1:1 in 2018 to 21.5:1 in 2025.

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