La Feria Independent School District - La Feria ISD: Dynamic Era of Educational Change

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 Consolidated Independent School District (LFCISD) and many other school districts throughout the United States failed to comply with desegregation mandates. In the 1960s La Feria had five schools: La Feria High School; Lincoln Junior High, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Robert E. Lee, and Sam Houston. Sam Houston Elementary School (1-4) was also known as the Mexican School. It was a segregated school for Mexican and Mexican American students. In rare instances, Mexican American students were admitted to Robert E. Lee Elementary School upon the insistence of parents and the approval of school administration.

In addition to the white school campus located at Robert E. Lee Elementary, Robert E. Lee housed 4th and 5th grade Mexican and Mexican American students at the original, two story High School building. Corporal punishment was the discipline of choice and administered on a daily basis to Mexican and Mexican American students who spoke Spanish at the Robert E. Lee campus.

It was an administrative decision that determined whether or not 3rd grade students attending Sam Houston would be promoted to Robert E. Lee after the completion of the third grade, or remain at Sam Houston Elementary for the completion of the fourth grade. Though attending the same school at Robert E. Lee, separate classrooms divided Anglo students from Mexican and Mexican American students. This did not change at Roosevelt school which was a 5th and 6th grade campus. The segregation continued through Lincoln Junior High. By the 1970s, the High School was not segregated. There were some Mexican American students who were exceptions to this rule of racial segregation and were placed in predominantly Anglo classrooms. These students were often children who had a strong command of the English language, and whose parents were educated and of middle class social economic status. Such parents did not want their children attending school with Mexicans and/or Spanish speaking Mexican American children. This basically constituted a type of class discrimination among Mexican Americans.

In 1971, the Mexican American seniors had their own club and no Anglos were allowed. This was there form of segregation.

Also, in the 1960s, the student population at La Feria hit a record high. Enrollment increased at Sam Houston Elementary 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. 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. Circa 1962, La Feria already had a Mexican American female teacher at Sam Houston. 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.