[4] The school, which opened in 1995, was named after Mexican American politician and judge Alicia R.

[5] Its two-way bilingual program for kindergarten through grade 3 opened that year as part of the U.S. Department of Education-funded Project Mariposa ("Mariposa" means butterfly), an effort between different school districts.

Each following year an additional grade level with bilingual education was established; in 2000 the school's first eighth-grade class graduated.

[4] Mandarin Chinese, German, Japanese, French and Russian were to be offered in the coursework from the school's beginning.

[7] As of 2001[update] 95% of the students are Hispanic and Latino, and the remainder belong to other ethnicities.