Donna Public Schools
Donna, Hidalgo County, Texas
Marker Inscription
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.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Donna's school system traces back to a 1904 school in the nearby Runn community, where the earliest classes met in a settler's home. The new town's first school opened in 1908 in a one-room building and a borrowed store before its first schoolhouse was finished in 1911, and the district was formally organized in 1919. Over the decades it absorbed several early area schools to become one of Hidalgo County's leading systems.
Why it matters
The steady consolidation of scattered one-room schools into a modern district mirrors the coming-of-age of public education across rural South Texas in the early twentieth century.
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Related people
- · A. F. Hester
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Donna Central Elementary School
Donna, TX
Funded by a 1925 bond election, this is the oldest surviving building in the Donna Independent School District, designed by the firm of Elwing & Mulhausen. Its two-story central block, Tudor-arched entry, and pair of square towers made it a distinctive civic landmark. First an elementary school, it later served as a junior high from 1965 to 1983.
Weslaco High School
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Weslaco's school district was born in 1921 when residents petitioned to split from Donna ISD, and by 1923 its first building rose—a reinforced-concrete and hollow-tile structure faced in dark Butler brick, designed by San Antonio architect Harvey P. Smith. Its recessed entry, pediment, and banded brickwork marked it as a point of civic pride in the young Valley town. Slated for demolition, it and the neighboring junior high were instead rehabilitated for use again in 2006.
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Our Lady of Mercy Catholic Church
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