San Francisco will rename 44 schools, including campuses named after former presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln and Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein.
The near-unanimous Monday vote by the San Francisco Board of Education, with only one dissenter, comes after years of debate — and much scorn, including from Mayor London Breed — over the reckoning of historical figures and their contentious, flawed legacies.
“It’s a message to our families, our students and our community,” board member Mark Sanchez said in the meeting, per the San Francisco Chronicle. “It’s not just symbolic.”
The new namesakes for the schools must adhere to a new set of guidelines, including that individuals honored by a renaming are not slave owners or abetted in slavery or genocide, attached to human rights violations, or are “known racists and/or white supremacists.”
Read the full story at SFGate | Education News.
