SAN FRANCISCO – Perhaps it was sudden, that 44 names were deleted at once. Or maybe it was the feeling that the Education Council went a step too far, and during a violent pandemic to take off. Whatever the reasons, the decision to remove one-third of the city’s school names, including those named after Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln, hit a nerve in San Francisco.
Less than 12 hours after the city’s Education Council voted to change the names, Mayor London Breed attacked the decision, questioning the council’s priorities. “We are going to bring the same urgency and focus to putting our kids back in the classroom, and then we can have that longest conversation about the future of school names,” said Breed.
Even more striking was the editorial board of the San Francisco Chronicle, which wrote that members of the Board of Education had “largely abandoned the education business and renamed themselves as amateur historians.”
The council’s 6-1 decision came Tuesday night, when they voted for Zoom to remove the names of those “who were involved in the subjugation and enslavement of human beings; or that oppressed women, inhibiting the progress of society; or whose actions led to genocide; or that otherwise they significantly diminished the opportunities of those among us to the right to life, freedom and the pursuit of happiness. “
On the list were schools named after George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Francis Scott Key, for their slave ownership; Abraham Lincoln, for the execution in 1862 of 38 members of the Dakota tribe; and Dianne Feinstein, senior senator from California, because a Confederate flag stolen outside the city hall was replaced in 1984, when she was mayor of San Francisco.
Other names scheduled for exclusion: President Herbert Hoover; John Muir, the naturalist and author; James Russell Lowell, an abolitionist poet and editor; Paul Revere, the figure of the Revolutionary War; and Robert Louis Stevenson, the author. The justification for each decision was listed on a spreadsheet.
The Education Council has not decided on new names and says it accepts suggestions.
“Any final decision to change the names of schools is up to the elected members of the Education Council,” the council said in a statement.
Many disbelieving parents scoffed at the decision on social media, even as the news ricocheted off the country’s right-wing news sites.
Some parents said they were especially irritated by the announcement of the name changes the moment they received an email from the district saying that students were unlikely to return to learn in person this school year.
Dr. Adam Davis, a San Francisco pediatrician who has a son in kindergarten and a daughter in second grade, said he was receiving text messages from friends in Boston ridiculing the changes.
“I don’t know anyone personally who doesn’t find this embarrassing,” said Davis. The name change, he said, “is a caricature of what people think San Francisco liberals do.”
On Facebook and Twitter, parents said they were concerned about the cost of the name change – estimates for changing signage, paperwork and websites for 44 schools reach millions – and how it will worsen the district’s already strained finances. The name changes were made without the participation of the community and took priority over the reopening of schools, the parents said.
In an interview, Dr. Davis made it clear that the anger about the issue was not just from conservatives. Like many political disputes in San Francisco, it was an intramural liberal struggle.
“I am a strong liberal Elizabeth Warren – Biden was too moderate for me,” said Davis. “Liberals, by definition, believe that the government can do good things. If we do laughable things, we make fun of the movement. “
Noah Griffin, who studied at George Washington High School six decades ago and was involved in other disputes involving historical legacies, said the name changes left him divided.
He is not opposed to changing the name of his alma mater because, as a black man, he views Washington’s slaveholding as unforgivable.
“What Washington did did not benefit people who look like me,” said Griffin. “The stain of slave ownership is something I cannot ignore.”
Griffin also said he understood the exclusion of Lincoln’s name, not because of his personal beliefs, but because of Native Americans.
“Lincoln is a hero for me, but not for the American Indian community,” said Griffin. “Only those who put on their shoes know how tight it looks”.
But Griffin said he is opposed to renaming Dianne Feinstein Elementary School.
“I worked for Dianne Feinstein as an administrative advisor,” he said. “We have been friends for almost 50 years. I think she was an exemplary senator.
“There may be some excesses along the way in this process.”
Nguyen Louie, mother of a student at Junipero Serra Primary School, named after an 18th-century Catholic priest who established missions in California, said he supported changing the school’s name.
“I’m a little ashamed to send my son to school,” she said. Serra was canonized in 2015 by Pope Francis, but is criticized by Native American groups and many others for the suppression of native cultures during the brutal period of colonization.
But Louie said she wasn’t sure about all the other names on the list – Lincoln, she said, “it’s difficult” – and she would have liked the process to have gained more time.
“It would be great if they could say, ‘These schools are in the process of being approved, but we will implement them later,'” she said.
Brandee Marckmann, mother of a third-grade student at Sutro Elementary School, named after a late 19th-century mayor of San Francisco and being removed by racist policies at the time, is unequivocal in her support for the name change.
“I think it’s a real sign that we live in a country so racist that we have so many of our schools named after people who have committed atrocities against blacks and indigenous people.”
Keeping some of the names, like Lincoln, could be justified, she said, “only when you centralize whiteness”.
The renaming process, she said, has been “a really good journey in large part to get a name that is cheerful and fair”.
“In 30 or 40 years, people will say, ‘Why did we have schools named after slave owners?'” She said.
The San Francisco renaming dispute is one of many in the Bay Area. Across the Golden Gate Bridge in Marin County, a group of parents and alumni are accusing members of Sir Francis Drake High School’s faculty and administration of dishonesty and removing signage without full community consent.
And across the bay, the administration of the University of California, Berkeley, on Tuesday, not named Kroeber Hall. A decision-making committee noted that although Alfred Kroeber was considered one of the most influential American anthropologists in the first half of the 20th century, his research methods were “immoral and unethical, even for the time”.
Among other reasons cited, Mr. Kroeber “collected or authorized the collection of remains of Native American ancestors from tombs and curated a repository of these remains for research study,” said the committee.
In what is perhaps a sign of the times, it was the fourth name withdrawal at the university last year.
“Everything is subject to reevaluation,” said Griffin, a former student at the school formerly known as George Washington High School. “We are living in revolutionary times.”