Site of New Braunfels Academy

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'm gonna give it to you straight. You're rolling through Comal County, and there's something standing here that the state of Texas itself had to wrestle with before it ever came to be. The New Braunfels Academy.

The first tax-supported school in Texas that is still in existence. Now let that settle for a second, because the story behind it is the kind of thing that makes you appreciate every building that outlasts the argument that almost killed it. When the State Legislature took up the question of this academy, they didn't just pass a bill and move along.

They called it, and I want you to hear this in their own words, they called it a great question of law and public policy. That is not the language of a routine vote. That is the language of people who know they are doing something that hasn't been done before and aren't entirely sure they're allowed to do it.

But they did it. In 1858, the academy was incorporated by act of that Legislature. Tax-supported.

Official. Done. Here's the thing that really makes this marker sing.

The Texas Constitution of 1876 is the document that provided for local taxation for school purposes across the state. That came eighteen years after New Braunfels Academy was already up and running. Eighteen years.

This place didn't wait for the law to catch up. Then in 1900, they erected the building that stands on this site today. And that building, raised for learning, now serves as the tax office of the Independent School District.

The school became the building. The building became the office that handles the very taxes that the old debaters back in 1858 were so nervous about collecting in the first place. Texas has a way of doing that, turning its arguments into its institutions, and then letting them stand long enough to become landmarks.

What the marker says

Site of New Braunfels Academy, the first tax-supported Texas school still existent. By act of the State Legislature (where it was called "a great question of law and public policy") the academy was incorporated in 1858 -- 18 years before the 1876 Texas Constitution provided for local taxation for school purposes. Erected 1900, this building of New Braunfels Academy now is tax office of the Independent School District. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark, 1965.