I drove past Garfield Elementary three times before I realized I'd been mispronouncing it in my head — it's not the cartoon cat, though that's definitely what every six-year-old thinks when they first arrive. The building sits on South Roberts Drive, red brick and practical, the kind of place that's been educating East Side kids for decades without making a fuss about it.
What struck me most was the playground — not elaborate, not trying to be anything other than what it is. Swings, slides, that particular shade of mulch that shows up in every elementary school memory. I watched during drop-off one Tuesday morning, parents pulling up in everything from minivans to work trucks, kids tumbling out with backpacks half their size. There's something deeply Sioux Falls about Garfield — no pretense, no Instagram-ready signage, just the steady work of teaching reading and math and how to stand in line.
The neighborhoods around here — off Minnesota Avenue, bleeding toward 12th Street — they're the ones people drive through without thinking twice. Working families, renters, the folks who keep this city running while everyone else focuses on developments near 85th or out by Tea. Garfield serves them quietly, year after year.
I talked to a parent outside Casey's on Cliff Avenue who told me her kids went there, that the teachers knew every student's name by October, that they made it work even when budgets tightened and class sizes grew. That's the truth nobody puts in brochures — schools like Garfield do extraordinary things with ordinary resources, and they do it because they have to, because these kids deserve just as much as the ones in newer buildings with better parking lots.
It's not flashy. The paint could use touching up in places. But Garfield's been here, doing the work, long before I arrived in Sioux Falls — and it'll be here long after.
— Grace
But Garfield's been here, doing the work, long before I arrived in Sioux Falls — and it'll be here long after.