More Than a School: The Loss of Lafayette High School Leaves a Hole in St. Joseph’s North Side

On Tuesday morning, Aug. 25, the doors at 412 E. Highland Avenue will open for another school year. Students will walk up the same steps, fill the same hallways and sit in classrooms that have watched generations of St. Joseph children grow up.

But for the first time in more than a century, there will be no Lafayette High School.

The building remains, beginning a new chapter as Lafayette Middle School. But the high school that served St. Joseph’s North Side since 1917 is gone, and for the people who grew up beneath the green and gray, that distinction matters.

This isn’t simply the story of a school district reorganizing buildings. It’s the end of a high school that became part of the identity of an entire section of St. Joseph.

Generations of Fighting Irish

For many families, Lafayette wasn’t simply where someone went to high school. It was where the family went to high school, sometimes for generation after generation.

Parents became graduates, their children became graduates, and some eventually returned as teachers and coaches. Longtime educator and Lafayette alumnus Jeff Leake summed up that connection during a North Side celebration for the school this spring.

“My kids went to Lafayette, my parents went to Lafayette, and I taught at Lafayette for over 20 years,” Leake said.

For Leake, Lafayette was part of his family. For countless North Side families, it was much the same.

That connection is difficult to measure on a spreadsheet. Enrollment can be counted, operating expenses can be calculated and buildings can be assigned capacities, but it is much harder to put a number on what happens when the same school educates grandparents, parents and children.

Lafayette had more than 100 years to create those connections.

A School Built Into the North Side

When the school opened in September 1917, it was known as North High School. Seventeen teachers served students in grades one through 10 under Principal Vincent A. Davis, and basketball and football were already part of school life.

Students selected green and gray as their colors. In December 1917, the Board of Education renamed the school Lafayette High School in honor of the Marquis de Lafayette.

Two years later, a successful football team helped give the school a nickname that would last for more than a century: the Fighting Irish. The shamrock eventually became the school’s symbol and one of the most recognizable pieces of Lafayette’s identity.

The school expanded again and again as the North Side grew. Additions in 1940, 1961, 1969 and later decades brought new classrooms, gyms, science labs, a band room and other facilities.

The building changed, the neighborhood changed and St. Joseph changed. Lafayette stayed.

Old photographs show just how deep that history runs, from early aerial views of the school to images of Lafayette students collecting scrap during World War II. By 2017, the school had reached its 100th anniversary, something few high schools ever get the chance to celebrate.

Nine years later, Lafayette graduated its final senior class.

“It’s Always Felt Like Family”

There is one word that comes up again and again when people talk about Lafayette: family.

Long before anyone knew the school would lose its high school status, students were already describing it that way. Former students wrote about classmates and teachers looking out for one another and about Lafayette having an atmosphere that made people feel like they belonged.

That same feeling showed up again when the end became real. Before the high school closed, several Lafayette staff members gathered to get small shamrock tattoos as a permanent reminder of the school.

Attendance secretary Nayra Montoya had only worked at Lafayette for a few years, but she said the school had already become something more to her.

“It’s always felt like family,” Montoya said.

Some staff members chose to permanently put the Lafayette shamrock on their bodies before they were separated into other district buildings. That says something about what the school meant that enrollment numbers and budget reports never could.

What Lafayette Gave North Side Kids

For some students, Lafayette was more than tradition. It was opportunity.

During the heated school reorganization debate, 2006 Lafayette graduate Becky Hill spoke about growing up in a low-income family that could not afford private cheerleading lessons. Lafayette gave her the chance to participate anyway, giving her an experience and sense of belonging she otherwise might not have had.

Hill eventually came back to the district as a cheer coach herself.

That is part of what neighborhood schools can mean. For a teenager without money, transportation or connections, the football field, band room, gym, classroom or club a few blocks from home can become the place where they discover something they are good at.

It can be where they find their people, where a teacher notices them or where they simply feel safe.

During the reorganization debate, residents repeatedly told the school board that St. Joseph’s three high schools were more than buildings. Speakers talked about neighborhood schools as places that offered students meals, stability, mentorship and refuge from difficult circumstances outside school.

Those arguments carried particular weight on the North Side, where Lafayette had filled that role for generations.

The Fight to Keep Lafayette

The road to Lafayette’s final day was complicated. In April 2025, St. Joseph voters rejected a $157 million bond issue tied to a long-range district plan that included eventually moving St. Joseph from three high schools to two.

It is important to note that voters were not directly voting on whether Lafayette should close. Still, the defeat forced the district back into discussions about consolidation, finances and the future of its schools.

By fall, students, parents, teachers and alumni were packing public hearings. Many urged the district to preserve Central, Benton and Lafayette and argued that each school served a community with its own traditions and identity.

In October 2025, the Board of Education selected a community-developed proposal known as Plan E, which would have kept all three high schools open while pursuing savings in other areas. For a brief period, Lafayette appeared to have survived.

That changed quickly.

District administrators said the proposal would not save enough money to address the district’s financial problems. Less than two weeks later, the board moved away from its commitment to the three-high-school model.

On Nov. 24, 2025, the board voted 5-2 to move forward with a two-high-school system. Central and Benton would remain high schools, while Lafayette would become a middle school.

For the North Side, the decision meant something that had existed since World War I was about to end.

One Last Year

Once the decision became final, Lafayette’s last months became a long goodbye.

In April, the Northside Neighborhood Watch Association organized a parade celebrating the school. More than 25 organizations and businesses participated as students, alumni and residents lined St. Joseph Avenue.

Cheerleading coach Shatarra McDonald said the turnout showed that even as the school was being lost, the Irish spirit could still bring people together.

Athletes also competed knowing there would never be another Lafayette season after theirs. Track standout Emery Omon broke school records during the final year, records that no future Lafayette High athlete will ever have a chance to break.

“It’s sad, but it feels good that I could do it before it closes,” Omon said.

Then came graduation.

On May 17, the Lafayette High School Class of 2026 crossed the stage at Civic Arena as the final graduating class in school history. Senior Jakobee Barnett described the moment as bittersweet, with pride in being part of the final class mixed with the reality that there would never be another.

Three days later, the final bell rang.

Alumni, parents and North Side residents gathered outside the school as Lafayette dismissed high school students for the last time. Junior Tye Hammond had expected to return to Lafayette for his senior year, but instead he would finish high school somewhere else.

“I loved every moment. All the memories I’ve made,” Hammond said.

Then the bell rang, and after 109 years, Lafayette High School was finished.

The Building Is Still Here. Lafayette High Isn’t.

That may be what makes this loss feel so strange.

There will be no demolition and no abandoned building sitting behind a fence. On Aug. 25, students will once again fill classrooms at 412 E. Highland as Lafayette begins its new life as a middle school.

Hopefully, another generation of North Side children will create memories there. But for Lafayette alumni, that does not make the loss of the high school any less real.

There will never be another freshman class arriving at Lafayette High School. There will never be another senior class walking across a stage as Lafayette graduates.

There will be no more Lafayette homecomings, no more graduating classes adding another year beneath the Fighting Irish name and no more high school athletes putting on green and gray knowing they represent the North Side.

The building survived. The high school did not.

For more than a century, St. Joseph was a three-high-school town: Central, Benton and Lafayette. Those names represented different neighborhoods, rivalries, traditions and generations of families.

For the North Side, Lafayette was theirs.

It was where grandparents graduated, where parents met and where kids played football beneath Friday night lights. It was where friendships started, teachers changed lives, teenagers got into trouble, fell in love, won games, lost games and eventually walked out the doors carrying a diploma.

That is what disappears when a high school closes.

Not the bricks, but the continuity.

On Tuesday morning, the old doors on Highland Avenue will open again. The hallways will be noisy, lockers will slam and another group of children will begin making memories inside Lafayette.

But somewhere in those halls are more than a century of Fighting Irish who once walked the same floors.

And for the first time since 1917, none of the students walking through them will be able to say:

“I go to Lafayette High School.”