Monger Elementary celebrates family-friendly designation

by Clayton Sidenbender - September 19, 2025

ELKHART — When April Walker became the Monger Elementary School principal in 2014, retired principal Don Kominowski had laid a great foundation for her and the school, she said.

Now, 11 years later, Walker and her staff continue to build upon that success.

A recent Indiana Department of Education report from earlier this year showed Monger Elementary along with Riverview Elementary were named among the state’s 45 most family-friendly schools. Monger was recently recognized by the Elkhart Community Schools board for its success as well.

Walker credits the success of Monger Elementary to the hard work of her staff and willingness to go above and beyond for families.

“The things that our staff organizes to help families is above and beyond,” Walker said. “For example, we give gift certificates to the laundromat; parent doesn’t have a vehicle, we’re going to pick a kid up for school so that they don’t miss school; a parent doesn’t have insurance, we’re going to try to link them up with community resources to help them get insurance.”

Walker said the school has the Full Service Community Schools grant, which funds the opportunities to do extra things for families. The school also adopts families each Christmas season, does a survey to see what families need and buys those items.

Many of the students that are served by the school come from an impoverished background. Walker said about 90 percent of students at Monger qualify for a free and reduced lunch.

“We just work really hard to try to provide and create relationships with families, so that they feel safe and comfortable bringing their kids to school,” Walker said. “It’s hard for parents not in poverty to parent, and keep up, and get your kid to school, and do all the things you need to do. I feel like we really, really try to help families out and show that we want their kids here.”

Another reason for the success at Monger is the longevity and familiarity of the staff and the low turnover rate. Walker said she has only two teachers who have been at the school for less than five years. Both were student teachers at Monger before they were hired and stayed, she said.

“That is crucial because that relationship is there and you can’t put a price tag on that,” Walker said. “It takes time to build. I can have difficult conversations with my staff, there is a mutual trust and respect there. It makes a huge difference when you’ve had time together and you’ve had time to build relationships with people and build mutual trust.”

Walker addressed chronic absenteeism and the way the school is dealing with it. She said student engagement is one way the school handles the issue. Another is by building relationships with students that makes them want to come back.

Through the Full Service Community Schools grant, the school has also contracted an attendance social worker. Each week, the school pulls a weekly attendance report of any student over a 10-week period who has five or more absences.

“Once they have five absences, we’re reaching out, there’s a parent meeting, we create an attendance contract with parents,” Walker said. “So we ask them, ‘What’s keeping your child from going to school? What do you need? How can we help? What are you going to agree to? What are we going to agree to?’ They sign it. I mean, we give kids alarm clocks.”

Walker acknowledged that it is not always easy to work on the south side of the city because of the different backgrounds and difficult situations some families and students face.

Walker said it comes down to the little things that help support families and students.

“You have to have each other,” Walker said. “And you have to really, really, really believe that people are doing the best that they know how to do and how can we support kids and be educated?”

Read this article on the Elkhart Truth website here.