Parents, teachers and school district officials in San Francisco are locked in a heated debate over an effort to rename some school buildings that were named after controversial figures in history like former President Abraham Lincoln and California Senator Dianne Feinstein, according to The San Francisco Chronicle.  

The San Francisco Unified School District’s board created a renaming committee made up of parents, students, teachers and community members earlier this year to examine schools that may need to be renamed because of the actions or views espoused by the figures for which they are currently named. 

In a November 10 meeting agenda, the board listed 44 school sites that the committee recommended should have their names changed or removed, following guidance released by the San Francisco Unified School District. 

In a section called "Guiding Principles For Removing Name," the district wrote that a school should be renamed if it is named after "anyone directly involved in the colonization of people, slave owners or participants in enslavement, perpetrators of genocide or slavery, those who exploit workers/people," and more.

The list also says anyone who is "connected to any human rights or environmental abuses" or "directly oppressed or abused women, children, queer or transgender people," should have their name removed. It adds that anyone who was a known racist, white supremacist, or shared racist views should have their names removed along with any person "connected to any human rights or environmental abuses."

San Francisco first-grade teacher Jeremiah Jeffries, chairman of the renaming committee, said it was important for the city to remove the names of people who did problematic things from school buildings. 

“Uprooting the problematic names and symbols that currently clutter buildings, streets, throughout the city is a worthy endeavor. Only good can come from the public being reflective and intentional about the power of our words, names, and rhetoric within our public institutions,” he said. 

But local parents, teachers and historians have bashed the move and the criteria, with some criticizing it for being callous considering the monumental problems people are facing with schooling during the coronavirus pandemic. Historians have also questioned the criteria for removing names and called it out for being selective, petty and in some cases, inaccurate. 

Even San Francisco Mayor London Breed has come out harshly against the committee's actions, slamming them for prioritizing the building renaming crusade over getting kids into schools. 

"And now, in the midst of this once in a century challenge, to hear that the District is focusing energy and resources on renaming schools — schools that they haven't even opened — is offensive. It's offensive to parents who are juggling their children's daily at-home learning schedules with doing their own jobs and maintaining their sanity," Breed wrote in a statement.

"It's offensive to me as someone who went to our public schools, who loves our public schools, and who knows how those years in the classrooms are what lifted me out of poverty and into college. It's offensive to our kids who are staring at screens day after day instead of learning and growing with their classmates and friends," she added. 

Breed went on to say that she believes in equity but does not think the renaming effort will help children struggling to manage schooling from home.

"The fact that our kids aren't in school is what's driving inequity in our city. Not the name of a school. We are in a pandemic right now that is forcing us all to prioritize what truly matters. Conversations around school names can be had once the critical work of educating our young people in person is underway," she added. "Once that that is happening, then we can talk about everything else. Until those doors are open, the school board and the district should be focused on getting our kids back in the classroom."

The board has created a public spreadsheet of school names and people have added notes about potentially offensive actions or statements their namesakes have made. 

The list features names like Lincoln, Feinstein, former presidents James Madison and Thomas Jefferson, Revolutionary War figure Paul Revere, inventor Thomas Edison, National Anthem writer Francis Scott Key and many others. It implicates them in a variety of crimes related to racism against Asians, Native Americans and Black people. 

Despite the backlash, the process is moving forward, and all 44 school sites must now submit a new slate of potential names by December 18. 

“The discussion for Lincoln centered around his treatment of First Nation peoples because that was offered first. Once he met criteria in that way, we did not belabor the point. We asked ourselves, ‘Did the name under consideration meet one or more of our criteria?’ If that name met criteria, they were put on the list,” Jeffries told The San Francisco Chronicle. 

“On a local level, Dianne Feinstein chose to fly a flag that is the iconography of domestic terrorism, racism, white avarice and inhumanity towards Black and Indigenous people at the City Hall. She is one of the few living examples on our list, so she still has time to dedicate the rest of her life to the upliftment of Black, First Nations and other people of color. She hasn’t thus far, so her apology simply wasn’t convincing,” Jeffries added.

The Los Angeles Times contacted Feinstein's office, who forcefully shot back at the board for spreading patently false information about the senator. 

In addition to the Confederate flag accusation, the spreadsheet includes a claim that Feinstein was responsible for the eviction of hundreds of elderly Chinese and Filipino residents of a hotel in 1977. Both of these statements are either false or distortions of what happened, according to The San Francisco Chronicle. The newspaper reported that the Confederate flag flew outside of City Hall in 1964, many years before Feinstein took office. She also had not taken office when the elderly Asian residents of the hotel were evicted. 

“The school district is free to take whatever action it deems necessary, but it’s important to know the flag, part of a design installed years before Sen. Feinstein was a supervisor or mayor, came down during her tenure as mayor,” Feinstein spokesman Tom Mentzer told The Los Angeles Times. 

Some parents and teachers also took issue with the idea that historic union leader Cesar Chavez was left off of the list. Chavez's biographer, Miriam Pawel, said he often called immigrant workers "wetbacks," urged his followers to report illegal immigrants to authorities, and even encouraged his supporters to attack immigrants coming across the border from Mexico.  

“We did not discuss the life of Cesar Chavez except to say that he did not meet criteria,” Jeffries said.

The dispute has made its way into national headlines due to the statements made about Lincoln. In the spreadsheet, someone wrote extensively about Lincoln's views and actions toward Native Americans, and Jeffries even questioned his commitment to Black people. 

“The history of Lincoln and Native Americans is complicated, not nearly as well known as that of the Civil War and slavery. Lincoln, like the presidents before him and most after, did not show through policy or rhetoric that Black lives ever mattered to them outside of human capital and as casualties of wealth building,” Jeffries said. “There is a lot of scholarship out there. I encourage everyone to seek it out. Read.”

Lincoln does have a complicated history with Native American populations. He saved 265 Indigenous men from hanging after the Santee Sioux uprising in Minnesota but hanged 38 others. He also supported a variety of laws that allowed the government to encroach on Native American territory, often violently. 

Parents had mixed feelings about the effort. One parent, Matt Price, told The San Francisco Chronicle that he agreed with Breed about the poor timing of the effort.

“This move, in light of the disastrous year this has been, feels terribly disrespectful to the parents who are really struggling right now. It’s a well-meaning exercise and I’m certainly not opposed, but it’s very, very badly timed,” he said.

Others said it was appalling to have their children attend schools named after racists and bigots, with parents like Alida Fisher telling the newspaper that she was excited for them to rename her child's school, which is named after James Denman, San Francisco's first superintendent who held deeply racist views against Asians in the city. 

Some schools have come out against the effort and are pushing alumni to speak out against the renaming movement. 

But Mary Travis Allen, a member of the renaming advisory committee, told The Los Angeles Times that it was long past time for schools to change with the times. 

“The names of all the schools in this city should reflect people to be admired,” she said. 

Some, like United Administrators of San Francisco co-executive director Joan Hepperly, said the effort was appropriate but not for right now. 

“A rushed process would distort what we would hope to be a unifying and transformative experience into one that instead excludes members of our communities who are most marginalized,” Hepperly said.

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