San Francisco college board suspends plan to rename colleges | Bay Space

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) – America’s founding fathers received a reprieve Tuesday in San Francisco when the city’s scandal-ridden school board officially overturned a plan to rename 44 schools as part of a racist settlement that critics said went too far.

The city’s education committee, which met on Zoom, unanimously voted to honor its much-criticized decision to remove the names of a third of San Francisco public schools associated with racism, sexism, and other injustices. Among them were schools named after Presidents Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, and Thomas Jefferson, writer Robert Louis Stevenson, and Revolutionary War hero Paul Revere. Also on the list was a school named after long-time Sen. Dianne Feinstein.

Tuesday’s 6-0 ruling means school boards will overturn their vote from January and come back on the matter after all students have returned to full-time study in person. It does not set a specific schedule.

The renaming debacle was one of several self-inflicted controversies the San Francisco School Board faced during the pandemic, along with numerous lawsuits and public ridicule.

Parents, students and elected officials have blown the board over some of its goals – and timing. The decision was made in late January when all of San Francisco’s public classrooms were closed due to coronavirus restrictions. You still are. Mayor London Breed called it “offensive and totally unacceptable”, among other things, for the board to focus on changing school names rather than bringing children back into the classrooms.

Some of the city’s youngest students are expected to return to face-to-face classes this month after more than a year of distance learning due to the pandemic. There is no schedule for the return of middle and high school students.

The renaming efforts have also been criticized for historical inaccuracies and inferior research that consulted Wikipedia rather than historians.

A renaming advisory committee falsely accused Paul Revere of attempting to colonize the Penobscot people. It also confused the Alamo Elementary School’s name with the Battle of Texas rather than the Spanish word for poplar.

“While we’re at it, how about the renaming of San Francisco,” wrote columnist and city clerk Carl Nolte after the vote in the San Francisco Chronicle, noting that the city was named by missionaries after a Roman Catholic saint. “That clearly fits in with the guidelines for a new name.”

Feinstein Elementary made the list because when she was mayor in 1984 it was decided to replace a destroyed Confederate flag that was part of a longstanding exhibition outside City Hall. When the flag was pulled down a second time, it was not replaced.

“It feels like the truth has won this time,” said Seeyew Mo, head of the San Francisco family, of Tuesday’s vote. His group opposed the renaming and drew attention to the inadequate research.

“I’m glad they came to their senses – after legal proceedings and public pressure,” said Mo, who also opposed the board’s “top-down process”, in which a small group made the decision without the wider school community . “A lot of people agree with the idea of ​​revisiting names, but they just disagree with how it was done.”

The renaming process was led by a committee formed in 2018 to investigate the names of the county schools amid a national reckoning of racial injustice that followed deadly clashes at a white supremacy rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Schools and institutions across the country are considering changing their names as the country re-evaluates its heroes.

The San Francisco committee noted that anyone “who has engaged in the subjugation and enslavement of people, or who oppressed women, is holding back social progress, or whose actions have resulted in genocide, or who otherwise enhance the opportunities of those of us who have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness “should not have schools named after them.

The result sparked an outcry in California that the net had been thrown too far and ridicule on social media and right-wing news sites for reviling political correctness that had gone wrong.

Board chairwoman Gabriela Lopez said in February that the process would be paused until all the children were back in school. Lopez admitted in a statement that mistakes had been made in choosing schools and said that if the board got back on the issue, they would hire historians for a “more deliberative process”.

Since the vote on the name change, the board has faced several lawsuits. The city of San Francisco took the dramatic step of suing the school district and board of directors to pressure both of them to reopen classrooms faster. Another was filed in March by San Francisco attorney Paul Scott, whose children attend public schools, claiming the school board’s renaming decision violated California open assembly law and did not involve the community.

San Francisco Superior Court Judge Ethan Schulman issued a ruling asking the board to do what the lawsuit requires – overturn the vote and dissolve the renaming committee – or show by April 16 why he shouldn’t be forced to do so.

The resolution passed on Tuesday ignored the criticism but condemned the lawsuit, saying it wanted to “avoid the distraction and wasteful use of public funds in frivolous litigation”.

Tuesday’s meeting was also the first since the board voted last week to remove one of its members, Alison Collins, from her role as Vice President and other titles over 2016 tweets about Asian Americans.

In the tweets, Collins said that Asian Americans are using “white supremacy” thinking to move forward. She defied calls to resign and last week sued the school district and five of her six colleagues for violating her right to freedom of expression. She is demanding $ 87 million in damages.

The historian Harold Holzer described the school authorities’ first attempt at renaming as “overcorrection”. Holzer objects to the removal of Abraham Lincoln’s name from a high school, which, according to the San Francisco committee, was due to the treatment of Native Americans during his tenure.

“I know people want to be inspired and not worship false idols,” said Holzer, Lincoln Scholar and director of the Roosevelt House of Public Policy Institute at Hunter College. “But to be honest, for me there is still no better example of American history at its highest idealism than Abraham Lincoln.”

In the midst of the Civil War in 1863, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation that freed slaves in the Confederation, among other achievements that included rising out of poverty to become president, fighting for equal opportunities, and saving the country from division .

“If Lincoln doesn’t win, we’re in big trouble,” said Holzer. “The performances so far outweigh the mistakes. I think he deserves praise.”

This story has been corrected to show that the City of San Francisco sued its school board, but the lawsuit was not filed by the mayor.