Students aimed orange Frisbee discs at makeshift targets one late October morning during a physical education class at Frederick Douglass Elementary School.
While children were learning and playing on school grounds, construction workers toiled away at remodeling the nearby Ruben Salazar Apartments, which once sat abandoned after a fire. Less than a mile-and-a-half away, Zavala Elementary School sits empty – one of five campuses closed down by the El Paso Independent School District this school year amid declining enrollment.
Last school year, Douglass Elementary experienced a turnaround in the state’s A-F Accountability rating system, improving two letter grades from a D in 2024 to a B in 2025, according to scores released by the Texas Education Agency in August…