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Q. Is it true that Southside Elementary School was in the Southside Community Center building on Guadalupe Street?
A . No, Southside Elementary, built in 1949, was a few blocks away in the school building at the corner of South LBJ and Lee Street. Before San Marcos schools were integrated, it was the school for Spanish-speaking children.
This building wasn’t the first school serving Spanish-speaking students in San Marcos. In 1908, an earlier Southside School was located at the corner of Valley and Herndon Streets in San Marcos. Forty-one students attended grades one through six there.
By 1928, Southside School had relocated to a wooden frame building plus two houses on the block of land bordered by Lee Street, LBJ, Grove Street and McKie Street. There were four classrooms in the main building and one classroom in each of the houses.
Between 1928 and 1938, enrollment grew to 326 students. The average number of students per room was 54. About 10 years later, the official enrollment was 113. However, this number rose dramatically to 603 once the migrant workers had returned by the end of January 1948. Spanish was the dominant language of the children, but none of the teachers spoke Spanish in school, although two of them were Hispanic males.
In 1965, Southside Elementary was renamed Bonham Elementary. In 1970, the school district began to offer all SMCISD 5-year-olds free all-day kindergarten at Bonham. In 1977, all kindergarten and first grade students attended school at Crockett. Second and third grade students went to Bowie and fourth and fifth grade students went to Travis.
In 1985, the state legislature mandated Early Childhood programs for economically disadvantaged children. Bonham re-opened to serve 200 preschoolers.
Then the district’s preschool program for children with disabilities moved to Bonham in the early 1990s. This program served 3- to 5-year-old children. It provided early intervention through special education.
In 2009, pre-K students moved into Hernandez Elementary. In spring 2015, a brand-new Bonham pre-K school opened on the site of the demolished Bowie School at the corner of South Guadalupe and Broadway Streets.
Of course, the old school has a new role in the community. It is now the home of Centro Cultural Hispano de San Marcos. Their website offers this description: a cultural center in the heart of San Marcos, Texas and its Mexican American barrios.
The main source for information on the old Southside/Bonham School was “50 Years of Learning: The History of Bonham School (formerly Southside) as related to Kathy Haule & Deborah S. Paratore.”
Next week’s column will continue with another source: “Sueños y Recuerdos del Pasado: Dreams and Memories of the Past: A Community History of Mexican Americans in San Marcos, Texas.” That book provides information about schools before 1908. Much of the material comes from people whose families attended these schools.
