The Texas Education Agency rated the school district as having "Met Standard" in 2013.

For the campuses in Galveston, the district will provide transportation to any part of GISD.

In Port Bolivar, the houses and residential areas are zoned to a K-8 center.

[7] In 1881, the citizens of Galveston, authorized by the Legislative Act 1879 which specified that all cities of a certain size could initiate and maintain their own school system, organized a public school district and elected a board of trustees.

[citation needed] In the summer of 1883, a local dry goods businessman, George Ball, offered to finance the construction of new schools.

Ball High School opened its doors to 200 pupils on October 1, 1884, with a building consisting of 12 classrooms, two offices and an auditorium.

Susan Wiley Hardwick's Mythic Galveston: Reinventing America's Third Coast documents that Central High School was opened as a high school for black students in a storefront in 1885.

[9] On January 2, 2007, the Galveston County Daily News published a report about parents frustrated over plans to close Scott Elementary School.

[15] The District Education Council approved a GISD plan to close multiple schools.

[16] On May 15, 2007, the Houston Chronicle reported that the League of United Latin American Citizens, in an attempt to prevent schools from closing, filed a complaint with the U.S. federal government asserting that GISD violated a desegregation order.

[17] Pat Guseman, an official with Pasa Demographics, predicted that GISD would lose about 1,468 students in the five years after 2007.

[14] Guseman said that many of the student losses would originate from the East End of the island.

[19] Before Hurricane Ike hit Galveston in September 2008, GISD had 7,900 students.

[20] After Ike hit Galveston, the district lost 25% of its total enrollment.

If the district decided to renovate Courville stadium, it would have had to purchase 75 structures, including a church, to build enough parking spaces.