San Francisco schools named for George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and 42 others to be renamed
It’s a name game.
San Francisco’s school board voted Tuesday to change the names of 44 public schools in the city, including those named after George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
The Board of Education for San Francisco Unified School District voted 6-1 to remove the names of “historical figures who engaged in the subjugation and enslavement of human beings; or who oppressed women, inhibiting societal progress; or whose actions led to genocide; or who otherwise significantly diminished the opportunities of those among us to the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
The school board ruled that Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt, Paul Revere, Francis Scott Key and sitting U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) also fit that criteria, according to the Chronicle.
The 44 schools to be renamed make up one-third of the district’s schools, the Chronicle reported. More than 55,000 students attend San Francisco Unified schools.
The public comment portion of Tuesday’s meeting was notably long and heated, according to the Chronicle. Some parents disagreed with the decision as well as the process.
“This is a bit of a joke. It’s almost like a parody of leftist activism,” parent Gerald Kanapathy said, according to the Associated Press. “I don’t particularly mind the notion that some of the schools need to be renamed. There are a lot of questionable choices out there. But they sort of decided on this and pushed it through without much community input.”
The school board created a committee back in 2018 to investigate the school names, noting that it was in response to the deadly August 2017 far-right marches in Charlottesville, Va.
The task force finally put the list together in 2020, the Chronicle reported, though some questioned its sourcing. Feinstein landed on the list because she replaced a damaged Confederate flag at San Francisco City Hall when she was mayor in 1984.
“On the Google sheet of the renaming committee, they cite Wikipedia as a source,” one high school sophomore said at Tuesday’s meeting, according to The Guardian. “I’m not even allowed to use Wikipedia as a source for my history papers, let alone to spend millions of dollars to rename a school that may not even need to be renamed.”
The student attends a school named after 19th century poet James R. Lowell, an abolitionist whose white supremacist beliefs landed Lowell High School on the 44-school list.
Families and staff at each school have until April 19 to recommend new names. Board president Gabriela Lopez said the full renaming process “could take a couple of years.”
