However, the school was leased, and later purchased, by Northern Arizona University (NAU) and is now used for the intensive English program for non-native English speakers.
Created in May 1935 by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), South Beaver Elementary was a segregated school for Hispanic students, and later African-American students after the closure of Dunbar School, and remained segregated up until the 1950s.
The school was primarily dominated by said ethnic groups until its closure.
South Beaver was the oldest and smallest school building FUSD owned and was the first magnet school the district offered.
Before the Kinlani Dormitory (now the Flagstaff Bordertown Dormitory), a Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIE)-contracting dormitory, stopped taking younger students, it sent younger children living there to South Beaver Elementary.