The last time I saw Alicia Rodriquez, she was standing in the middle of Thornton Elementary School, pointing out this and that, and the this and that she was pointing to wasn’t all that good. Stuff was crumbling, paint chipping, and broken things that weren’t getting attention soon. Morale was sliding like a sled on a steep hill after one of our ice storms. 
Parents wondered when Thornton would receive its share of Arlington ISD bond money, which seemed to go everywhere but there.
“We’re patient,” Rodriquez, who started at the school in 2001 as a teacher and is now its principal, told me.
Aah, patience.
Rodriguez and her trooper staff needed it when AISD finally waved the white flag on the building and decided to knock it down and start anew. Forget about the patch-up route. The same was true for another east side institution—Berry Elementary—just a few miles away.
It would be best if you had more than the patience to move an entire student body and staff to another school – in this case, Knox Elementary, which would soon be shuttered and merged with other campuses.
The Eastside schools were among some of the first educational institutions in Arlington. Thornton has been around since 1956, and Berry has been around since 1955.
Berry now has over 100,000 square feet of wiggle room over two stories. Classrooms are more spacious, and students can enjoy a media center, fine arts rooms, STEM labs, maker spaces, collaborative areas, and purposefully designed outdoor spaces.
Thornton’s new digs also feature a STEM lab, outdoor learning space with a plaza and canopy, paved basketball court, playfield, parent center, playground, teacher lounge, and collaboration areas, which Rodriguez most craved.
Funds came from the nearly $1 billion 2019 Bond program.
It should be noted, too, that 95 percent of Thornton students and about 91 percent of Berry students are from low-income families.
What I like most about the new Thornton is how the design celebrates the community’s heritage with vibrant colors and rhythmic patterns.
Shortly after students walked into the new building last year, Enrique Torres admitted that while he, too, believes in the Thornton mantra that they “don’t need a building to love the school,” there has been a renewed sense of pride just pulling up to the new facility to drop off his third grader.
“It makes you feel that the district is willing to invest in your child,” he said. “When you see buildings falling apart and nice buildings in other parts of town, you wonder if they are forgetting about you. Yeah, the building doesn’t make the learning any better, but the students have a sense of pride when entering the building because the environment feels different, you know?”
We know. Rodriguez said at the time that the students “love that the school is two stories high” and couldn’t wait to play on the new playground.
And not just the kids.
“Our staff is ecstatic about the new spaces,” Rodriguez said. “Including the collaboration spaces and workroom spaces for each grade level.”
Then there were the old trees.
Two massive Oak trees have been around Thornton for as long as Thornton has been around, so getting rid of them for the sake of a new building was out of the question.
If anything, Rodriguez wanted those big Oaks to hang around because while a new building may have sprung up around them, having the trees stay for the next few decades of Thornton is now something of a historical landmark.
No shiny new building could mean any more than that.
Kenneth Perkins has been a contributing writer for Arlington Today for nearly a decade. He is a freelance writer, editor and photographer.
