The San Francisco Unified School District suspended its plan to rename 44 schools that a board-appointed panel had claimed to bear the names of historical figures who propagated racism, sexism, and genocide.
The district board of education’s 6-0 vote Tuesday that paused the renaming effort is a rescission of a resolution it passed in January to approve the panel’s list of schools for renaming, including those named after former Presidents Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, and Herbert Hoover.
Before Tuesday’s vote, board members had already committed to stalling the renaming initiative after widespread criticism, including from the city’s Democratic mayor, that it should have been directing its attention to reopening classrooms. Students in the district have gone without in-person learning for over a year due to pandemic school closures.
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“What I cannot understand is why the School Board is advancing a plan to have all these schools renamed by April, when there isn’t a plan to have our kids back in the classroom by then,” Mayor London Breed said in a January statement after the board accepted the list of schools for renaming.
Pressure from Breed and others sources, including a lawsuit brought by the city against the board to require reopening, led the school board’s commissioner to commit to working only on reopening efforts.
“Reopening will be our only focus until our children and young people are back in school,” Commissioner Gabriella Lopez wrote in an op-ed for the San Francisco Chronicle on Feb. 21. “We’re canceling renaming committee meetings for the time being.”
The resolution passed on Tuesday does not permanently suspend the renaming initiative, but it said that “the Board shall revisit the matter of renaming District schools, including reauthorizing the Panel, or similar Advisory Committee … only after all students have returned to in-person learning for 5 full days each week.”
The board’s effort to rename schools began in May 2018, when it adopted a resolution “committing the District to changing names of schools named for 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 amongst us to the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
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The San Francisco Department of Elections recently allowed petition circulation to begin to recall three members of the board, including Lopez, over extended closures and the school renaming initiative.
