History
J.M. Hanks High School is named in honor of former Ysleta superintendent Jesse Mack Hanks, who retained the position for a full fifty years from approximately 1939 until his death in 1989. For his extended service to the district, Hanks was awarded an honorary Doctor of Laws from New Mexico State University in nearby Las Cruces, New Mexico in 1965 and was named superintendent emeritus by Ysleta.
The school was opened in 1978 to accommodate El Paso's eastward expansion and to ease overcrowding at nearby Eastwood High School, which lies 2.5 miles to the west of Hanks. The school initially enrolled seventh, eighth and ninth graders comprising the classes that would graduate in 1982, 1983 and 1984. The class of 1985 was added for the 1979-80 school year as those students became seventh-graders. As those four classes "moved up" each year, the student body thus remained virtually intact until Hanks reached standard high school set of grades 9-12 for the 1981-82 school year. Hanks' enrollment had reached 1,800 by 1980, with the inaugural class graduating 372 students in May 1982.
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