Located just south of downtown San Antonio, Green Elementary School has been educating the children of the Lavaca and surrounding communities since 1915. The school was named after Robert B. Green, a native San Antonian who served as a county judge of Bexar County and a State senator.
The 2023-2024 school year marks the final year of the Green campus in its current iteration. As part of the SAISD board's "rightsizing" decision, which was passed in the fall of 2023, the campus is expected to be renamed Bonham Primary in the 2024-2025 school year, and will serve Bonham Academy Pre-K through second grade students.
Current Green staff, teachers, and students will merge with Riverside Park Elementary, located just one mile south of the Green campus. The newly merged campus is expected to be called Robert B. Green at Riverside Park Elementary.
SAISD communications rightsizing staff member Deborah Silliman had the chance to photograph Green staff and students in spring 2024 to document the campus in its final months.
Please join us below as we explore A Day in the Life at Green Elementary School.
Crossing Guard Jazmine Muñoz's son currently attends third grade at Green, and the two walk to the campus daily. Next school year, Muñoz's son will be following the majority of his classmates and teachers on their move to Riverside Park. Muñoz herself went to Riverside Park, and even though she is disappointed she will not be able to walk her son to school every day, she is happy that Jennifer Soto, Green's current principal, is moving to Riverside Park, alongside the majority of Green's teachers and staff.
"I love my job; I love passing the children and waving at the people in the neighborhood."
- Jazmine Muñoz, crossing guard
Members of the Student Patrol, a club for Green's fourth and fifth grade students, help raise the American flag each morning. The Student Patrol also helps with various duties across the campus, including hall monitoring, walking younger students to class, and assisting with front office duties.
The 2024-2025 fifth grade class at Green has an even mix of male and female students. When SAISD's Young Women's Leadership Primary opened in 2019, Green lost a number of female students to the single-gender school, which is located a half a mile away from the Green campus.
Evelyn Peña, administrative assistant, started her journey at Green as a parent when she sent her son to Pre-K at the school almost 20 years ago.
"What makes Green special and unique is our families. I mean, I have seen everyone come here. Students who I had 20 years ago bring their kids here now."
- Evelyn Peña, administrative assistant
Peña has held about every staff position at the school, from counselors' clerk to secretary to data clerk to everything in between; she has done it all. And every morning, Peña walks one block from her house to the Green campus to welcome students at 7 a.m.
Though the school officially opens at 7:15 a.m., many Green parents work in the early morning. Peña volunteers her time so her students have a comfortable place to wait for the school day to begin.
The campus hosts a veteran teaching and administrative staff, like Peña, who have between six and 28 years of educational experience.
Head custodian Armando Virgil has been working in his role at Green for the past 18 years and his children attended the school for their elementary education. Weeks after the below photo was taken at Green, Virgil was transfered to Riverside Park to help prepare the school for Green's arrival. Virgil says he is looking forward to getting to know the new building.
"It's just like StarTrek. You talk to your building and say, 'She's holding up captain, she's holding up.'"
- Armando Virgil, head custodian
"I love the staff at Green, and the kids like to come here. The family from the family from the family, the sisters and cousins and all the parents who have been here before—it's just beautiful. Having been here themselves, parents feel welcome because they interacted with the same staff that are here now when they were kids."
- Armando Virgil, head custodian
In the 2023-2024 school year, 131 Pre-K through fifth grade students were enrolled at Green. Green's school number with the district is 131, which the office staff feel is serendipitous as the campus celebrates its last year in the building.
Green's littlest learners get free breakfast (and lunch) daily first thing every morning. SAISD operates the Community Eligibility Program (CEP) under the National School Lunch Program and School Breakfast Program, which allows all SAISD schools to serve breakfast and lunch to all children at no charge, no matter their grade level.
Head Start and Pre-K classrooms have unique menus that are different from all the other grade levels and meet SAISD's youngest learners' nutritional needs. The district offers a variety of foods, from Italian to Asian and everything in between, to allow students to explore and expand their palates.
As the school day begins, Principal Jennifer Soto and Assistant Principal Jannára Johnson ensure the campus is off to the right start. Each day, the pair greets students at the back entrance of the school so they can get a feel for how their students are feeling that morning. Those interactions inform the rest of their day, and give Green students daily face time with school leadership.
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Above, Belinda Morin's fourth grade class heads to their music class first thing in the morning. The students dance and sing their way into the day with music teacher Terri Jarzombek.
Above, Kristy Garza interacts with her fifth grade students. Garza has been teaching at Green for eight years.
Above, Garza goes over material that will be on the 2024 STARR test. Green students consistently perform well on STAAR tests and the campus is one of 11 A-rated campuses in the district the last time accountability ratings were released by the Texas Education Agency. In fall 2024, Green was named one of the top five Gold Ribbon Elementary Schools in Texas by Children at Risk. The campus is also a United States Department of Education 2024 Blue Ribbon nominee.
Pre-K teacher Ana Garcia, above, has been teaching at Green for 15 years.
"What do I love about Green? It's the students; it's the people we work with. We all have the same mindset - we want our students to be successful. Green is a happy place where we all work together."
- Ana Garcia, Pre-K teacher
Garcia is the only Pre-K teacher at Green, and she is looking forward to collaborating with a team of Pre-K teachers when she makes the move to Riverside Park.
Every single Green teacher is following current Green principal Jennifer Soto to Riverside Park, where Soto will serve as principal of the newly merged school. And 128 out of 131 students will move to the new campus with their teachers.
Third grade teacher Isabel Cepeda grew up a few blocks from Green and has been teaching at the campus for 16 years. Green is the only campus that she has worked at since she began her teaching career in 2008.
"What I like about teaching the kids is when they all of a sudden pick up something that they were struggling with. I love to see that little light bulb go on when they have excelled in something that they were having trouble with in the beginning of the year and the middle of the year. It's something that happens throughout the year."
- Isabel Cepeda, third grade teacher
Cepeda attended Riverside Park when she was a student at SAISD. Cepeda, along with 100% of Green's teaching staff, will be following current Green principal Jennifer Soto to Riverside Park, where Soto will lead the two merged schools.
"I grew up a few blocks from here, and I went to Riverside. It's amazing; it's exciting to be back over there. Of course, I am going to miss the Green building - this is where all my memories have made since I have been a teacher. But I am excited to build more memories at Riverside and get to know the kids over there."
- Isabel Cepeda, third grade teacher
Marquez can tell visitors the exact layout of the building as it stood in 1986, and how it has changed and expanded over the almost 40 years of her service.
Since January 2024, Soto and current Riverside Park principal Andrea Pitts have been hosting "Blending the Familia" events to introduce their staff and students to each other to ease the transition when the two school families merge in fall 2024.
"Our admin at both schools is great. They have a goal set in mind, and we try to align with it. We have had several opportunities to mix with the Riverside Park staff—there has been a lot of interaction!"
- Ana Garcia, Pre-K teacher
Each SAISD campus that is slated to close or merge is assigned a TSS, or Transition Support Specialist. Green's TSS, Anthony Johnson, previously worked as Green's PE coach. He, along with the other SAISD campus TSSs, is tasked with a wide range of responsibilities and will be key in packing and sorting materials at the campus level as the summer moves approach for rightsized campuses.
Even though change can be difficult, rightsizing the district has advantages for both students and teachers. As demographers Van Schoales and Brian Eschbacher said in EdWeek,
“Many demographers have focused on the long-term risk to Social Security or Medicare posed by the lower birthrates, but K-12 education is actually the first institution to be dramatically affected. Shrinking is hard. But it does not have to be catastrophic, and if done thoughtfully, can even be an opportunity to restart or build higher-quality schools."
In SAISD, rightsizing will allow the district to reimagine the way students are supported so both children and educators benefit. Combining campuses will all in a more equitable resource division among students and teachers, allow for teacher collaboration across the same grade levels, and ensure thriving schools.
To learn more about rightsizing at SAISD, click here.
"...I am going to miss this building. It was a perfect building for the family that was in it. Every time you walk in, it is happy, it is bright. People love coming here, they ask if they can come hang out on the campus.
People say, 'It's just a building.' But it is not just a building. I think people made a home here. People feel safe here and that’s what I love about it.
But I love the people the most; the families and the community that have created with each other. I'm not going to miss that because we are going to take that with us."
- Jennifer Soto, principal