Gilbert, Arizona

k Gilbert Mexican School

From the 1920s until 1951, Gilbert had a segregated school for Mexican children in grammar school. Above is a photo of the building they attended. The building is now used for accounting offices for the entire Gilbert School District. In the 1920s, this home in Gilbert (right) was used to teach the few black students who lived in Gilbert. The house was near the water tower but has been torn down. In 1940, a small two-room building was built to the west of the south wing of the elementary school, pro viding two first-grade rooms. Mrs. Tissaw taught in the larger east-side room, and Miss Applebee taught my class on the west end in 1941.

k School for black students

with the wood floors and the same basic class rooms now serving as a museum to educate people about the wonderful history of Gilbert from its meager beginnings in the early 1900s. This museum building was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980. From 1975 until today, the Gilbert School District Number 41 has continued to expand. It is building new schools to provide for the needs of the community, which has grown from the original handful of pioneers to today’s 190,000 inhabitants. Our schools have had to keep up. We currently have twenty-six elementary schools, six junior high schools, and six high schools. A proposed high school and an elemen tary school are currently on the drawing board.

Even though the old Gilbert Elementary School continued to be used until the 1970s, new brick cottages were built for classrooms to the west and south of the old school building. These units were built in 1954 and have been used continually as they are today in 2007. The original high school that was built in 1920 became the Administration Building when a new high school was built in 1965. That building is now Mesquite Junior High School. The current Gilbert High School was built in 1985 on the south side of Elliot Road east of Lindsay Road. In 1980, the entire elementary school com plex was rented and later sold to the Gilbert Historical Society in 1982. The Historical Society has been able to maintain the building

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