Donna Public Schools

Donna's schools were not one system. In 1911 Severiano Avila, Apolonio Ballí and Ventura Benitez hired Paciana Guerra, a teacher from Mier, Tamaulipas, to teach their children. East Donna, where Mexican residents lived, had its own school, and from 1920 into the mid-1960s the district kept Mexican American children in segregated schools. A third school for migrant students, on its own campus for grades three through eight, operated into the 1970s, justified by the claim that those children needed more attention.

What the plaque says

Donna Public Schools The present school system for the town of Donna can be traced to a 1904 school in the Runn community (6 mi. S). Classes were first held in the home of A. F. Hester, a founder of Donna. The earliest school for the new town opened in 1908. Teachers held classes in a one-room structure and a store building until completion of the first schoolhouse in 1911. The Donna School District was set up in 1919. Since then, several early area schools, including Runn in 1972, have merged with Donna. It is now one of Hidalgo County's leading educational systems. (1986)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge — 4.6 mi
  About 2,000 acres of river forest on the Rio Grande's north bank, the surviving part of Benigno Leal's 1834 land grant, kept as a refuge since 1943 where two bird migration routes meet.
• Museum of South Texas History — 17 mi
  Edinburg's regional museum, begun in 1967 in the 1910 Hidalgo County jail and now telling the Rio Grande's story from fossils and native peoples through steamboats to the 20th century.
• La Lomita Chapel — 18 mi
  A small sandstone chapel on the Rio Grande levee, built by Oblate missionaries in 1865 and rebuilt at this site in 1899, the landmark that gave the city of Mission its name.
• Bentsen-Rio Grande Valley State Park — 21 mi
  A 587-acre stand of Rio Grande woodland near Mission, once part of a Spanish porción, given to the state by the Bentsen family in 1944 and now headquarters of the World Birding Center.

More markers nearby

• Run — 0.3 mi
• Cpl. Harlon Block, USMC — 5.9 mi
• Donna — 6.5 mi
• Progreso — 6.5 mi