ARLINGTON, Va. — The Arlington County School Board says it will be creating a policy on how schools in its system are named.
“It’s time to talk about the names of our schools and what they mean and why they matter,” said chairwoman Barbara Kanninen at Thursday’s board meeting.
Since the violence that broke out in Charlottesville last weekend, Arlington school board members say they have gotten a renewed push of emails from people wanting the name of Washington-Lee High School to be changed, since it is named in part after Confederate general Robert E. Lee.
“The conversation about Washington-Lee name change is not a new one,” said board member James Lander. “We get letters and information from community members every year about the name change.”
The board stated that this new policy — regardless of what it will determine when it is ready — is not focused on the Washington-Lee name.
“We will not focus on any one particular school and ask should we change the name of this school,” stated Kanninen. “Instead, we will seek to establish naming criteria that reflect our values.”
Kanninen said this is the perfect time to look at how the school system is naming its buildings, especially since there are several new schools being built that will eventually need to be named.
She noted the names of Alice West Fleet Elementary School and Discovery Elementary School as examples.
“These school names — the newest in our system — are different from past school names in terms of the kinds of people and work we choose to honor.”
Alice West Fleet was a longtime Arlington teacher. In fact, she was the first African-American teacher in an all-white school.
Discovery was named for John Glenn and the astronaut profession.
However, there is no set policy on proper or improper names for schools, meaning there is no standard to decide whether a name like Washington-Lee is suitable for residents in the county.
“Establishing criteria prevents us from falling into the slippery-slope problem,” noted Kanninen. “It will keep us focused on facts, not opinions.”
“The violence that motivated this action and the sentiments that motivated this action and the causes that motivated this action should not motivate snap decisions by elected officials,” said Reid Goldstein.
For Lander, he is more concerned about the day-to-day issues racism and inequality have on students’ lives.
“We tend to get a flood of emails when there’s a failed leadership or something recent that happens,” Lander said. “We get emails every year about Washington-Lee. We listen to it, but we’re trying to educate our children, we are growing 1,000 students a year, we’re trying to build so we have a thoughtful process. We won’t have a knee-jerk reaction to name change, but it will be a thoughtful dialogue.”
He said that the public should not focus too much on the names of buildings and streets.
A thoughtful, lengthy discussion on the matter is important to the board because it wants to get this right the first time.
“To me, the overriding pedagogical question that this group must address is how do we treat history that’s uncomfortable — history that doesn’t conform to today’s moorings? Do we teach it? Do we acknowledge that’s it part of the diverse influences that made our society what it is today or do we sweep it into the backroom of a museum?” Goldstein asked rhetorically at the meeting.
“It’s very, very important that we do this right or we are going to keep doing it over and over again.”
