TASA Charter Members

Charter Members Who
Served as TASA President

Seven of the charter members served the association as president during TASA’s first 25 years:

TASA’s First Female Member

The only woman on the roster of charter members was Mary Carroll, superintendent of Corpus Christi ISD from 1922 to 1933.

Carroll began her CCISD career at age 18 in 1901, when she was hired to teach Spanish. Although she was born in Texas, she grew up in Monterrey, Mexico, where her family owned a furniture factory.

According to the Corpus Christi Caller-Times, she was paid $50 a month, which was less than what male teachers were paid. “They explained the difference,” she said later, “by saying that men had dependents to support, but many women teachers did, too, with younger brothers and sisters.” After 20 years of teaching in CCISD, Carroll was named principal of the high school in 1921 and superintendent the following year.

The Caller-Times reports that, during her tenure as superintendent, a $495,000 high school was built. Carroll used that opportunity to introduce a junior high/senior high system. The newspaper reports that she always viewed that as her most important contribution to the school district. At the dedication of the district’s third high school — Mary Carroll High School — in 1957, the then-retired Carroll was informed that the district now had nine junior high schools. “Just shows it was a good idea, doesn’t it?” she remarked.

Of her involvement in TASA, Carroll said that the meetings always interested her, and she attended regularly.

She also told a story about a gentleman from New York who expected to encounter “giant he-men” in Texas. Instead, he encountered Gov. Miriam “Ma” Ferguson at the Texas Capitol in Austin, and he found County Superintendent Effie Hutto in the Nueces County school superintendent’s office. But he didn’t learn his lesson, because when he met Miss Carroll in Corpus Christi, the gentleman asked for the district superintendent. She replied, as a matter of fact, “I am the superintendent.”