Just over two months after voting to rename 44 schools, the San Francisco school board is poised to reverse that decision Tuesday to avoid costly litigation over the issue.
The upcoming vote represents the latest development in a months-long initiative that culminated amid the pandemic. In late January, the board voted 6-1 to change dozens of school names associated with slavery, oppression, genocide and colonization as public schools districtwide remained closed.
The process began in 2018 with a resolution to create a committee to advise the board. The committee ultimately recommended changing 44 school names, including Lincoln, Washington, Mission and Balboa high schools, as well as Alamo, Jefferson and Serra elementary schools.
Many communities supported the effort, with parents saying it was hurtful to have their children wearing school sweatshirts with the name of James Denman, for example, a former district superintendent who denied education to Chinese students.
Others considered the effort too far reaching and expensive, with no cost estimate on what it would take to rebrand more than three dozen school sites. Examples across the country put the price tag at somewhere between $20,000 and several million per school, depending on the school’s size, signage and other items related to the previous name, like band uniforms.
Rule #1: Whoever honors a man, honors a sinner.
Rule #2: Whoever claims he can honor no man is really honoring himself and his own sovereign judgment.
Rule #3: See Rule #1
I can tell you are a great teacher Tom Byrne just by your post. (Laughter.)
Christ the teacher pray for us.
(One of my favorite icons, have one in my car and one in my home.)
Another case of temporary sanity here in the Bay Area.
I’m hoping and praying this becomes a permanent trend.
These “diversity” critics are not very well educated in history. The United States has wonderful, great diverse place names – about half the states are named by Indian tribes. Alaska means “the place of the crashing sea” Mississippi means “great river” Michigan means “great lake” Kansas means “people of the south wind” Nebraska means “flat river” The Dakotas, means “the allies” Oklahoma means “red nation”. Then there are also many city names, based on local Indian tribes: Seattle, Tucson, Manhattan…
And now to city names: The five greatest cities in California have Spanish names: Los Angeles, San Jose, San Francisco, San Diego, Sacramento.
So, why aren’t these critics opposed to these names? After all, they are all Spanish names, not Anglo. Why isn’t that considered? What is the problem with high schools named after Anglos, when entire states and cities have Indian and Spanish names? Don’t we speak every day, of the weather in Los Angeles and San Jose? Don’t we say these state names, everyday in the news? They are NOT Anglo names, and of course, States are more important than local high schools. Isn’t this “unfair”? Shouldn’t the largest California cities have at least a few Anglo names, to reflect diversity?
Of course not!! They have Spanish names, and that is our history.
So let’s have an end to these childish complaints about diversity in high school names…
An island of sanity in an ocean of cultural change?