Peñitas Common School dates in surviving records to the 1890s, when it served about fifteen students in a one-room frame building with at least one desk and six benches. Early educational institutions in west Hidalgo County also operated in nearby Tabasco, Havana, Los Ebanos, San Ramon, and Guadalupe, and the area schools gathered once a year for a field day. Early educators at Peñitas Common School included M.C. Trevino, Nellie Lee Schunior, and nuns from the Sisters of Mercy. In 1913, a brick schoolhouse was erected for classes from first grade through eleventh grade. In 1925, the school was absorbed into Tabasco Consolidated Independent School District with several other common schools in Hidalgo County, and that district was later renamed La Joya Independent School District. Its alumni included the first graduates of Nellie Schunior Memorial High School, about 50 veterans of World War II, 40 Korean War veterans, and 80 Vietnam War veterans. After decades of educating children from Peñitas and the surrounding area, the school closed in 1975 and was later demolished.