1/ Thread: Since the @CvilleSchools "Naming of Facilities Committee" starts meeting this Thursday, I thought I'd send out some info and thoughts.

2/ All the work I've done on researching and compiling biographical info on our current names is here: http://correctingthenarrative.org/posts/names-primer/

3/ More than anything, most of the people for whom our schools are named just have no relevance to our students today. Most parents and students don't need a school named after their ideal person-- they just want someone who's life wasn't completely antithetical to their values.

4/ We see this in surveys like the one done in Arlington County : https://www.apsva.us/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/APS-School-Naming-Policy-GMU-Report.pdf

5/ My favorite comment from that report is: "Stop naming schools [for] Virginian confederates. THEY LOST IT IS WEIRD" (I assume from a student)

6/ In general, abstract value names, such as "Justice Elementary" or "Freedom Middle" have the least support, because everyone's concept of these values is different, and therefore the have no precise expression.

7/ We don't have schools with "notorious" names like Lee-Jackson Elementary in Mathews or a Lee-Davis High like Hanover.

8/ For our schools, most people wouldn't name right Clark, know who Venable was, if Burnley-Moran and Jackson-Via were named for two people or one (and get the wrong Jackson given our love of Confederates), which of many possible Walkers or Johnsons, and have no guess for Buford.

9/ On the practical side, changing the name of a school has disruptive effects on everyone, including that the name is everywhere and people are accustomed to using it, and there's monetary cost to change it (though not much w/o sports and band uniforms)

10/ On the conceptual side, the lives memorialized in the names of our schools should reflect the values of our community. Changing them represents an opportunity to uncover and engage with our history, and use this to motivate the continual process of evaluating heritage.

11/ Because of this, I feel re-eponymization should be a primary strategy. Many schools, particularly those that are hyphenated, use their initials, just as J-V or BME, and this was the main reason Washington-Lee High in Fairfax was renamed to Washington-Liberty to keep the "W-L"

12/ Many have common names, such as Walker or Johnson, that can be re-used to honor other people.

13/ Place names have also been commonly used, as we've seen in Albemarle already, with Cale being renamed Mountain View Elementary and Sutherland being renamed Lakeside Middle School. However, place names also have a deep history.

14/ For example, Albemarle attempted to renamed their charter school to Rose Hill Community School before community historians pointed out that Rose Hill was the name of the plantation the formerly occupied the land

15/ likewise the "mountain" referenced in the name of Mountain View Elementary is the former plantation of Monticello.

16/ In our own schools, Clark could be renamed to Belmont Elementary without knowing that Belmont comes from the Belle Mont Estate, a plantation that existed prior to creation of the Belmont neighborhood by two Confederate activists, Micajah Woods and Bartlett Bolling.

17/ Ultimately, the control of renaming should flow out from those affected: students, then teachers, then parents, then the community. The original naming was a very undemocratic process, and we should make every effort possible not to repeat that.

End.