‘We do stand on the shoulders that came before us:’: Spanish dual-language school named in honor of pioneering Spokane educator, artist

Depending on who you ask, Rubén Trejo was known for something different.

In the art world, he’s a nationally recognized sculptor and painter who masterfully weaved themes from his Mexican heritage with a natural sense of humor.

To his former Eastern Washington University students, he was a nurturing and knowledgeable professor who built a still-existing space for Latino students in a city where they were a stark minority.

To the 250 kids attending Spokane’s first standalone dual-language academy in September, he’s the namesake of their school.

The Spokane Public Schools board Wednesday night approved suggestions brought forth by the school’s principal, Mauricio Segovia, to dub the school Rubén Trejo Dual Language Academy after the local icon.

Trejo lived in Spokane from 1973 until his death in 2009. He was born in a boxcar in Minnesota to two Mexican immigrants who worked on the rails and resided in one of the cars, a common practice for migrant workers at this time, Trejo’s son José Trejo said.

With his family, he traveled the Midwest to pick crops seasonally. He also spent some of his childhood in Mexico, where José said the space allowed him to blossom in his individuality.

During his 30 years teaching at EWU, Trejo mentored many Latino students and eventually co-founded the school’s Chicano studies department.

The Rubén Trejo Dual Language Academy serves students in kindergarten to seventh grade where staff teach students half in Spanish and half in English. They outgrew their former facility shared with another option school and will start classes in September in the once-vacant Pratt building in East Spokane.

“Our intention is to grow biliterate and bilingual students, and that’s the dual language academy,” Segovia said. “There’s a connection with our community, with the city and with someone with deep roots in our community who has shown evidence of meaningful contribution to our community.”

The school is one more in a collection of recently opened schools to be named after local figures, like Carla Olman Peperzak Middle School for a local Holocaust survivor or Denny Yasuhara Middle School in honor of a local teacher. It’s an intentional deviation from naming schools after long-deceased historical figures without a regional connection, like Adams, Madison, Roosevelt or Jefferson elementaries.

Trejo’s imprint on Spokane is extensive and varied.

“He showed up differently for people,” his daughter Tanya Trejo said. “He’s a different facet of a diamond for each person he interacted with and really met them where they were.”

His work is on display at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and has been featured in local exhibitions in the Museum of Arts and Culture and at Eastern Washington University. While a nationally known name in the art world, his son said people first know him as a creative, engaging and motivating professor at Eastern.

“Even now, they’ll say, ‘He was so great, so inspirational,’ ” Trejo said. “He was inspirational in how he made them come out of their shell or whether it was that he had a really fun class to go to.”

Trejo arrived in Spokane in 1973 from Minnesota to take the art professor job at Eastern. In 1977, he founded the Chicano studies department and earned the school’s trustees’ medal in 1987.

“There wasn’t much of a Latino or Chicano community here in 1973; he was sort of one of the pioneers in this area as far as just even a person of color,” José Trejo said, recalling being one of a handful of nonwhite students in schools in Spokane.

Trejo would often host potlucks at his home, inviting international students to bring dishes of their own cultures to the delight of José and his sisters’ taste buds.

“I think the thing I remember most was there were always people at the house,” José recalled. “Pulitzer Prize winners, different intellectuals, professors and students, and whoever else wanted to come by and eat beans and rice and tortillas.”

In some cases, Trejo’s influence wasn’t known until much later.

Three years before Trejo’s arrival in 1973, School Board President Nikki Otero Lockwood moved to Spokane with her family in 1970 when she was 2.

“It kinda felt like we were the only Mexican family in Spokane at the time; there wasn’t a lot of culture here and there wasn’t any community, and that has greatly changed,” she said.

Years later, she enrolled at Eastern Washington University as a first-generation college student with a financial aid package that allowed her to do so. But two weeks in, her aid was threatened.

She didn’t know what to do, so she visited the Chicano Studies department that Trejo co-founded and asked for help. Through their advocacy, she kept her financial aid and was able to stay in school, and “the rest was history,” she said at the board meeting as she held back tears.

“I didn’t even know of the debt of gratitude that I had to Trejo for creating that program,” she said, her voice breaking. “That ripple effect is real, so I do have a huge, profound sense of gratitude for him, and I feel very honored to be voting for this tonight.”

Trejo’s name was among the nearly 6,000 submissions for the names of the new middle schools opened in 2021. While he wasn’t selected then, Lockwood recalled the submissions and suggested it to the committee who found it to be a good fit.

After surveying staff, families and the student body, the committee also selected the school’s mascot. They landed on the axolotl, a pink amphibian native to the lakes of Mexico City. Not only is the critically endangered species already beloved by the students of Ruben Trejo Dual Language Academy, Segovia is eager to use the creature to teach conservationism and culture.

“It’s great,” said soon-to-be first grader Sophia Song. “I love it.”

While the Trejo name brings to mind images of a prolific artist, an entertaining professor, Latino pioneer or a supportive father, José hopes the pupils at the school that now bears his father’s name will each resonate with different aspects of his extensive story.

“On the one hand, I hope people are inspired by having the options and support he didn’t have,” he said. “It’s going to be a place where they can be themselves, but also be a part of a grander community and have the tools to grow stronger in terms of their relationships with other cultures.”