Ball High School serves grades 9 through 12 here in Galveston, Texas. This is the school that serves grades 9 through 12 as part of the Galveston Independent School District, and it welcomes students from Galveston and Jamaica Beach as well as the unincorporated communities of Port Bolivar and Crystal Beach on the Bolivar Peninsula. The school mascot is the Tornado, known as "Tuffy Tor.
Listen to the building and the ground for echoes of its origin. In 1881 the citizens of Galveston organized a public school district, acting under the legislative act of 1879 that allowed cities of a certain size to create and maintain their own school systems. That district, as recorded then, was restricted to "white or caucasian" students and elected a board of trustees.
Around that time roughly twenty teachers were employed to teach students in grades one through seven, because before 1881 most education here had been private or parochial. In the summer of 1883 a local dry goods businessman, George Ball, sent a short note to the City Council announcing his intention to support a public high school; it read, "If the authorities of this city will furnish appropriate and sufficient grounds centrally located, I will contribute... Picture George Ball's 1883 note that promised to fund this very high school.