La Feria Independent School District

The La Feria Independent School District (LFISD) comprises four elementary schools: Sam Houston, C.E. Vail, David G. Sanchez and Noemi Dominguez, one Middle School: W.B. Green, and one High School: La Feria. LFISD is ranked as a 3A school district. It's rival school is Port Isabel. Its mascot is the Lion, colors are Maroon and Gold, and motto is Expect, Achieve, Excel.

La Feria High School

Rated as an "Academically Excellent" campus, brilliant teachers and staff, with few exceptions, control and manage this generations intelligence. With security advances throughout the school, the LIONS are assured their safety. Though they closed campus for the year of 2007/2008, the high school's staff is controlling violence with extreme perfection. The first ever History Club has been introduced by an astounding and recently added teacher to La Feria High School with great outcomes expected from its members. With high hopes and superior foundations, the athletic and academic societies of the LIONS will most definitely surpass other high schools.

W.B. Green Junior High School

Another "Academically Excellent" campus. Grades 7 and 8.

Elementary Schools

Sam Houston Elementary is the Pre-Kindergarten and Kindergarten campus, David G. Sanchez Elementary is our newest campus, and is home to 1st and 2nd gradeC.E. Vail houses 3-4 graded, Noemi Dominguez house 5th and 6th

Interesting Fact

When the newest school, Noemi Dominguez, was under construction, the School Board asked the residents of the city to name the new school. Forms were provided in the local newspaper, and residents wrote their choice and delivered it to the main office. A large majority of the vote was in favor of naming the school after retired principal and teacher, Mrs. Ruth Johnson, who served the district for over 30 years as an educator. However, the school board chose a name that was not proposed by any significant percentage of the respondents. They named it after Noemi Dominguez, a 1991 graduate of La Feria High School who obtained her BA from Rice University and was a teacher at Houston ISD. Noemi was brutally murdered by Angel Maturino Reséndiz, The Railway Killer/The Railroad Killer. Noemi might not have contributed to society, especially at her hometown, La Feria, because her life was taken at a young age, 26, but her love for education will remain in the hearts of the many friends and students she got to enlight in her short life. It should also be noted that the family of Noemi Dominguez is very close with a very influential member of the La Feria ISD School Board, Pancho Cobarrubias, which is why most people in La Feria feel the school was named after her instead of what the community wanted.

La Feria ISD: Dynamic Era of Educational Change

The 1960s brought tremendous changes and disturbances to the American educational system. Although the decision in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 mandated an end to segregation, La Feria Independent School District (LFISD) and many other school districts throughout the United States still failed to integrate. In the 1960s La Feria had four schools: La Feria High School; Franklin D. Roosevelt, the middle school; Robert E. Lee, the Anglo Elementary School and Sam Houston, the Mexican Elementary School. Mexican students attended Sam Houston Elementary, but the few who had mastered the English language attended Lee Elementary, the Anglo school. At the middle school, although in the same building, separate classrooms divided the Anglos from the Mexicans, but some Mexicans were hand picked and placed with the Anglos--the ones with light skin or who had affluent Mexican American parents. At the high school, a significant number of Mexican students were recommended to attend the vocational schools in the surrounding communities rather than to attend college. However, external and internal forces and actions during this dynamic era of educational change caused modifications within the La Feria school system.

Student walkouts and protests in nearby towns and counties in the late 1960s prompted the La Feria administration to begin hiring Mexican American teachers and begin a gradual integration process at its schools. For example, in 1966 and 1967 disagreements between farm workers and its owners in neighboring Starr County caused protests and social unrest. [http:www.tsha.utexas/handbook/online/articles/SS/oes3.html.] MAYO (Mexican American Youth Organization), later Raza Unida Party, who sought social justice by confrontations and demonstrations organized a successful student walkout in 1968 at Edcouch-Elsa high school, eighteen miles northwest of La Feria. The students demanded more Mexican American teachers and staff and equal opportunities for all students. [James Baldemar Barrera, "The 1968 Edcouch-Elsa High School Walkout: Chicano Student Activism in a South Texas Community," (Master's thesis, University of Texas at El Paso, 2001.) In 1969-1970, MAYO also founded El Colegio Jacinto Treviño in Mercedes, Texas, about seven miles from La Feria. [ [http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/CC/kbc51.html. TSHA Online - Texas State Historical Association ] ]

Also, in the 1960s, the student population at La Feria hit a record high. Enrolment increased at the Mexican school. The district began a summer language program for Spanish-speaking children. After the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 passed, more opportunities opened for minorities. Title I allowed the hiring of teacher aids and provided funds to employ more teachers, which La Feria did. In 1967 the Head Start Program opened its doors at Sam Houston Elementary. Also, in 1971 a group of activists presented a list of grievances to the school board. One of the items proposed was the desegregation of Sam Houston Elementary. The school board denied the petition. Therefore, the group, Colonias Del Valle, and its representative, Pedro Guzman, filed a complaint with the United States Department of Health, Education and Welfare, (HEW). To help implement all these new programs, which targeted the Mexican community, and to ease the pressure from HEW, La Feria ISD employed Mexican American instructors and Sam Houston desegregated in 1972. [Jennifer rose Nájera,PH.D., "Troublemakers, Religiosos, or Radicals?: Everyday Acts of Racial Integration in a South Texas Community," (Doctoral dissertation, The University of Texas at Austin, 2006), 92-93.]

Because of these external and internal forces the La Feria ISD administration, led by Mr. C. E. Vail until 1974 and then by Mr. William B. Green, began implementing the state mandated programs to show La Feria could comply and that its schools could excel. It was a slow gradual process, but Mexican American students and staff became more involved and visible in the school community. In 1971 the first Mexican American school board member was elected. When Sam Houston desegregated in 1972, another Mexican American joined the school board. Also, in 1972 La Feria hired the first Mexican American counselor. By 1974 Mexican Americans were visible at all levels of La Feria school school system. There were two principals, one at Sam Houston Elementary and one at La Feria High School, one counselor and six teachers at the high school and various teachers at the elementary and middle school level. [Figures were obtained by studying the 1968-1975 La Feria High School yearbooks.]

See also

* La Feria

References

External links

* [http://www.esconett.org/laferiaisd LFISD]