Buda’s school system grew from the consolidation of several nineteenth-century rural schools, including Elm Grove, Goforth, Turnersville, Mountain City, Antioch, Science Hall, and Kellyville. In 1881, the year Cornelia Trimble platted Buda, Mary Adams established the first school on property east of the railroad track along Railroad Street and served as its teacher. In 1885, school trustees erected a two-story wooden school building at the current site, and in 1908 they replaced it with a larger two-story brick building to serve Buda’s growing population. After that structure burned in 1928, builders completed the present one-story mission style schoolhouse, designed by Austin architect Roy L. Thomas, incorporating standing walls of the previous building that remain visible in the auditorium space. The auditorium became important to parents and students as the setting for school events before it was transformed into a community room. From 1931 to 1945, Bob Barton, Sr. served as superintendent while also working as a bus driver, teacher, and coach. He and his wife, Marietta, supported the fight for school integration after the city’s Mexican American school closed in 1948. African American high school students were able to attend the main school in 1956, and grades one through eight were integrated by 1961. In 1967, the Buda, Kyle, and Wimberley schools joined to form Hays Consolidated Independent School District, and the school, now Buda Elementary, continues to serve the community as an educational institution and gathering place more than one hundred years after it first opened.