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.

Out of EPISD’s 49 elementary schools, 14 increased their scores by two letter grades. Rusk and Zavala elementary schools were the only two elementaries to improve their accountability scores by three letter grades. Rusk improved from an F to a B, while Zavala moved up from a D to an A. Both closed earlier this year.

The rating system gives campuses and school districts a letter grade based on students’ academic growth and performance on standardized tests, among other metrics. This gives parents and community members an idea of how schools prepare students for the future.

Despite improvements in its overall rating, Douglass Elementary has received an F three consecutive years in the student achievement portion of the rating system, which measures whether students met expectations in the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness, or STAAR test.

Nine EPISD elementary schools received an F in student achievement in 2025.

The challenge for Douglass this school year is improving academic achievement while maintaining the overall upward momentum as new students transition in. The school at 101 S. Eucalyptus St. in the Chamizal neighborhood absorbed 40 students from nearby campuses that shut down and may see more students from the Salazar apartments in the coming years.

“We are shooting for an A. Everyone’s on board, the momentum is there,” Principal Michelle Sanchez Corral told El Paso Matters, saying the goal is to improve while meeting the needs of students displaced by school closures.

“When I stepped foot into this school, I said, ‘This will be the model campus for the Southside,’ and we’re well on our way. We’re making it happen. We’re doing it together. The work belongs to those in the arena, which are my teachers,” she added.

Corral said that while the student achievement section of the rating system offers important information, “what matters most is a campus’s overall trajectory and sustained improvement.”

Corral said the improvement was made possible by analyzing data on student achievement gaps, creating a positive school culture and an initiative to get parents more involved in their children’s school.

“My goal is always to ensure that students are truly learning, and that it’s not like a drill and kill kind of thing. And what I mean by that is that the learning that’s taking place is sustainable, and they’re able to truly learn and take it on to the next school year,” Corral said. 

“What I found is that we had a lot of gaps in their learning, in literacy, mathematics and science. So, I just took the data and started looking at what is the root cause,” Corral said.

Michelle Corral, principal of Douglass Elementary School, was glad to be one of the schools involved in El Paso ISD’s Destination District Redesign program because she believes her previous experience with a school closure helped her understand families’ grieving process and provide a welcoming transition to new students, Oct. 24, 2025. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)

Maria Salas, a connecting languages facilitator who helps teachers with dual-language programs, said teachers use that information to determine what areas they need to focus on.

“They know what to do with that data, it’s not just numbers. They really go to them to see what they need to do,” Salas said.

Corral also credits Douglass Elementary’s advancement to the training she received from the Holdsworth Center, a Texas nonprofit that provides coaching to public school leaders.

Though Corral received pushback from teachers, she said she used that leadership training to get them on board.

Winning the heart of the barrio

Douglass Elementary sits tightly nestled between homes and apartment complexes that border South-Central El Paso’s industrial zone. It is considered one of the lowest-income neighborhoods in the city.

When Corral first arrived at Douglass Elementary in 2021, she said there was little parent or community engagement at the campus, so she began hosting family events like movie nights and holiday celebrations. She said the school went from having no parent volunteers to 15 who help organize and set up events.

Nellie Garcia, parent and volunteer coordinator at Douglass Elementary, prepares for the school’s upcoming fall festival, Oct. 24, 2025. Garcia and Principal Michelle Corral credit their push to increase family engagement with helping to move the school from a D to B rating. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)

Nellie Garcia, a parent and volunteer coordinator, said she has noticed students are more excited to come to school when their parents volunteer.

“When the volunteers pass by, or if I have classes and the students see their parents, they’re super happy,” Garcia said.

Corral said some parents were skeptical of her intentions, but eventually came around to her side.

“They were kind of feisty at first, so I had to work on earning their trust,” Corral said about the parents of Douglass Elementary. 

“Last year, during Thanksgiving, the parents came up to me, and they said, ‘You know what Miss, you have won the heart of the barrio.’ And that’s a huge honor for principals,” she added.

Corral said this increase in parental participation helped boost the campus’ academic rating.

Some families and community organizations disagreed with that sentiment.

“Her making that statement really is putting the blame on parents for the failure of the school in previous years, regardless of parents participating,” grassroots parental advocacy group organizer Hilda Villegas of Familias Unidas del Chamizal por la Educación. 

“It is critical for parents to participate so that they know what’s happening in their school, and that they can voice their concerns and things get addressed. But just participating doesn’t change the situation when it comes to the academic achievement problems.”

Olivia Martinez, a grandmother to students at Douglass Elementary, said Corral has done a better job than the school’s previous principal, Alonzo Barraza, but feels there are still more improvements needed. Barraza is now the principal of the About Face program at EPISD.

Martinez noted she has not seen an increase in community events or meetings.

“Ella llegó con muchas ganas de decirnos, ‘Estoy con ustedes, miren, vamos a trabajar bien,’” Martinez said. “She arrived very eager to tell us, ‘I’m with you, we’re going to work well.’”

Martinez said the school often relies on substitutes and needs more teachers, counselors and staff to properly meet students’ needs. 

She said her granddaughter had a substitute when her regular teacher was absent from school for a month and her grades began to suffer.

“Many of the things she was going to learn, she didn’t end up grasping because there wasn’t enough time for the substitute to get to everything she needed to learn,” Martinez said in Spanish.

Some parents said they have felt shut out when trying to address issues at the school.

This includes health and safety concerns after the campus was locked down in the fall when an unknown person entered the school’s field and after students spotted rats in the 100-year-old building.

EPISD officials acknowledged the campus was put on lockdown earlier this year but did not specify why, and said the school doesn’t have a rat problem.

“We do not have a current rodent issue on campus, and any facility concerns are addressed promptly in coordination with EPISD Maintenance and Operations,” district spokesman Ernie Chacon said in a statement. Regarding the precautionary lockdown, Chacon said “the situation was resolved quickly, and families were notified accordingly.”

Other Douglass Elementary parents El Paso Matters spoke to said they were satisfied with Corral and felt their children were progressing academically at a normal pace.

Scoring Douglass Elementary

Douglass Elementary’s accountability rating has fluctuated over the years.

In 2019, the campus received a B (88) before the TEA paused the rating system in 2020 and 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

When the rating system was reinstated in 2022, Douglass Elementary received an A (90).

The following year, the school’s rating began declining after new accountability metrics took effect, dropping from a C (70) in 2023 to a D (63) in 2024.

Now, in 2025, Douglass Elementary has a B (83) rating.

Compared with 2024, 24% of Texas districts and 31% of campuses improved their letter grade. Most campuses maintained their previous rating, and only 15% saw a decline, according to the TEA. About 43% of campuses with a high number of economically disadvantaged students in Texas were rated an A or B.

Still, data shows Douglass Elementary students lag behind their peers on the STAAR test. The school is the only B-rated EPISD elementary to score an F in student achievement. 

The main improvement was in the school progress portion of the rating system, which measures the number of students who grew academically and how a school’s performance compares to other schools with similar economically disadvantaged populations.

Last school year, about 96% of Douglass Elementary students were considered economically disadvantaged, meaning they live in families with an annual income at or below the official federal poverty line or qualify for certain government assistance.

Douglass Elementary’s progress rating, which makes up 70% of a school’s overall accountability score, went from a D (63) in 2024 to a B (85) in 2025.

Students play a game with frisbees in a physical education class at Douglass Elementary School, Oct. 24, 2025. The school is one the of El Paso ISD campuses that has received students and staff from campuses closed as part of the Destination District Redesign. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)

The campus also made improvements in the “closing the gaps” metric, which measures how well a school is ensuring that all student groups are successful and makes up 30% of the overall accountability score.

This rating went from a D (63) in 2024 to a C (79) in 2025.

School closures and capacity concerns

Before the start of the current school year, Familias Unidas del Chamizal raised concerns about how Douglass Elementary would handle an influx of new students from the elementary schools the district shut down.

Douglass is the only remaining elementary school in the Chamizal neighborhood after Beall Elementary School closed in 2019 and Zavala Elementary closed earlier this year.

The district intends to close two more campuses next school year as part of a plan to address declining enrollment known as Destination District Redesign — or DDR.

Familias Unidas por La Educación, a south-central parent-led advocacy group, gathered outside the Ruben Salazar apartments July 16, 2025 to demand EPISD be prepared for an influx of students at Douglas Elementary School. (Claudia Lorena Silva/El Paso Matters)

Corral said she received about 40 students from Zavala, which had about 240 students last year. Corral said the remaining students who did not leave the district or move on to middle school transferred to Cooley Elementary School.

She said 15 employees from Zavala, ranging from custodians to teachers, transferred to Douglass Elementary.

Corral said she had dealt with school closures as the former principal of Clardy Elementary School, which consolidated with Henderson Middle School to become the Dr. Josefina Villamil Tinajero PK-8 School in 2022.

“Because I’ve already been part of closures before, I wanted to make sure that I was part of having good transitions,” Corral said.

“We always say children are resilient, and they are; however, the adults who are making this decision need to be the ones to make sure that we provide the opportunities for them to feel a sense of belonging,” she added.

Familias Unidas’ concerns about enrollment were amplified as the Ruben Salazar Apartments, a low-income public housing complex, were partially reopened after a major renovation.

Though Douglass Elementary has not gotten an influx of new students from the apartment, Corral said the campus has the space if more children begin to move in.

The school currently has about 440 students, but has room for 650, Corral said, noting the campus has several vacant classrooms currently being used for storage.

Related

LISTEN: EL PASO MATTERS PODCAST