After 31 seasons, 681 episodes and one feature-length movie, a lot has happened in The Simpsons. Fans can hardly be blamed for not picking up on every single detail on the screen, particularly when so many small sight gags happen in the background.
Springfield Elementary, in particular, has more than a few details hiding in plain sight. Some are more obvious than others, but they all add to the rich tapestry that is the life of Seymour Skinner and the students he fails to teach.
The Pool
Springfield Elementary has a impressive array of amenities to take advantage of. From their cinder block tetherballs to their asbestos-filled walls, it has something for every student. Well, as long as that student doesn't want a quality education or a future.
One of the more confusing amenities is the swimming pool. An early episode shows that the school has an indoor pool that is used for tethered swimming, but a later episode shows they had an outdoor pool that Skinner filled in after being trapped in it with thousands of worms. How many pools did this school have?
Changing Color
During the earlier seasons, the exterior changed color frequently, sometimes even within the same episode. But as the seasons went on, consistency increased, and the color palette fans came to know and love was established.
Seymour is surprisingly sentimental, though. There's a picture of the school in his office, depicting it in one of its former colors.
Disappearing Bell Tower
Another of Springfield Elementary's confusing features is its bell tower. It appears most frequently in the earlier seasons of the series and was featured heavily in the episode where Skinner and Patty are in a relationship.
Eventually, the bell tower disappears and is never referenced again. It's kind of strange when you consider the fact that it is a rather large feature to vanish without a trace.
Shockingly Large Faculty
For a school that seems to be made primarily of asbestos and can only afford to serve malk to its students, they have a weirdly large faculty. At the very least, they seem to turn over some staff with surprising frequency.
Over the course of the series, there have been at least five different gym teachers either mentioned or shown. They even have a specific coding teacher and a ballet teacher, which is weird because you would think ballet would be one of the first programs Skinner would cut.
Address
While it's rarely mentioned, Springfield Elementary actually has an address. The school is located at 19 Plympton Street. The address does exist in the real world in Middleborough, MA, but there doesn't appear to be a school at that location.
Having a corresponding address in reality could be a coincidence. The address could also be an homage to cartoonist and animator Bill Plympton.
Field Trip Memorial
A huge part of any school are field trips. Students get to leave the classroom behind and get out in the world for a bit. That also means the teacher doesn't need a lesson plan that day, which is why Ms. Krabappel and Miss Hoover love them so much.
Unfortunately, Springfield Elementary has a nasty habit of losing students on field trips. There's a reason Skinner is so diligent about permission slips. The school has a disturbingly large memorial wall for all the students who have gone missing on field trips. Naturally, it's Groundskeeper Willie's job to maintain it.
Has A Twin
Disturbingly, Springfield Elementary has a twin school not that far away named West Springfield Elementary. It used the same floor plans and decorators, making the two schools look almost identical.
Lisa learned how confusing this can be the hard way. Hopefully, West Springfield Elementary is better run than Springfield Elementary. That's unlikely, though. It's still located in Springfield, after all.
The Noble Puma
Like most schools, Springfield Elementary has a mascot. In their case, it is the noble puma which ends up defaced on occasion, much to Skinner's chagrin. As such, their football team is known as the Springfield Pumas.
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Keep in mind this is a different team than the one Flanders coached years earlier, which was called the Wildcats. Homer eventually took that team over, cutting almost everyone insight, including several of the show's writers.
Underfunded
Springfield Elementary is notorious for being grossly underfunded, which has led to some cost-saving measures that are both ingenious and horrifying. Students are regularly fed ground up gym mats in place of meat.
Their periodic tables are frequently missing elements or are promotional items from meatpacking plants. One of Skinner's boldest moves was to rent out space in the classrooms to overcrowded prisons. This unfortunately led to a mentor/mentee relationship developing between Snake and Bart.
Award-Winning School
Believe it or not, Springfield Elementary is actually an award-winning school. It was voted The Most Dilapidated School in Missouri. This doesn't mean that Springfield in The Simpsons is located in Missouri.
The school was moved brick by brick to Springfield, making it The Most Dilapidated School in Springfield. But if Springfield Elementary was moved from Missouri one brick at a time, did West Springfield Elementary also come from Missouri? They are are exact copies of each other, after all.