By Tatiana Rodriguez
Beall Elementary School in El Paso, Texas, was one of the first schools of the El Paso Independent School District (EPISD). It was an important school in South-Central El Paso before Zavala and Burleson Schools were built. Construction for Beall began in the summer of 1907 on Rivera Avenue, and it was opened in January the following year with only nine classrooms completed. The first day, the nine rooms were overcrowded and the attendance on January 23, 1908, was 347, averaging around 38 students per room.1 In September of the same year, seven more rooms were completed, and a small auditorium was converted into two additional classrooms.
Despite the addition of these rooms, there was still a shortage to accommodate the tremendous growth in student enrollment at Beall School in succeeding years. A six-room brick building, called the Beall School Annex, was constructed behind the school. As soon as it opened, it was overfilled. Half a block of land adjacent to the school was purchased by the El Paso school board for playgrounds and expanding facilities. There were also many houses on south Piedras Street that were used for temporary classrooms. In 1922, Beall had the best spelling record of any school in the district. By 1950, it was also named "the largest elementary school in the city of El Paso, the second-largest elementary school in the state, and was one of the largest bilingual schools in the nation."2
However, in January 2018, the El Paso school district voted to close Beall Elementary since the school had less land space to meet future growth in enrollment. On the other hand, EPISD also stated it did not expect considerable growth in the area. The district stood firm in its decision to close Beall in May 2019 "despite attempts from two new trustees to undo the action following months of protest, including a weeklong hunger strike, by parents and Chamizal community members."3 Students were moved to Douglass Elementary, only "blocks from the W. Silver Recycling Center, which processes industrial materials, including those from maquilas on the other side of the border."4 El Paso's parent committees have long claimed the school district disregarded environmental and safety hazards in what they said was a hurried decision to shut Beall's doors. A motion for EPISD to perform a more comprehensive study of the area failed, with most board of trustees voting against it.
Schools and churches are the institutional foundations for historic barrios. Beall's opening in 1908 is evidence that by that time, South-Central El Paso was being developed as a barrio.
Top left: The original Beall School building (1910). Image from Mrs. Belle Teel's collection. https://scholarworks.utep.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1007&context=hist_honors.
Top right: Beall Elementary School, shown in July 2019. Briana Sanchez/El Paso Times. https://www.elpasotimes.com/story/news/education/2019/08/20/episd-trustees-uphold-closing-beall-burleson-elementary-schools/2064404001/.
Bottom: Beall Elementary parents and their children march to Zavala Elementary School to stand for justice in education in the barrio. Briana Sanchez/El Paso Times. https://www.elpasotimes.com/story/news/education/2019/08/20/episd-trustees-uphold-closing-beall-burleson-elementary-schools/2064404001/.
Footnotes:
1 El Paso Herald, El Paso, Texas, "Fourteen Years Ago Today," January 23, 1922, 10:8. OR Foley, Edna Snowden, "A History of Beall
School, El Paso, TX" (1951). Student Papers (History). 11. https://scholarworks.utep.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1007&context=hist_honors.
2 Ibid.
3 El Paso Times, Aug. 20, 2019. https://www.elpasotimes.com/story/news/education/2019/08/20/episd-trustees-uphold-closing-beall-burleson-elementary-schools/2064404001/.
4 Ibid.
Opmerkingen