District seeks panel to rename 2 schools
Applications accepted through June 16 for main board of students, staff, parents
A search is underway for volunteers to help rename two Palo Alto middle schools now named after leading advocates of eugenics.
The Palo Alto Unified School District is accepting applications through June 16 from students, staff, parents and alumni willing to serve on a main citizens’ advisory committee and two subcommittees.
About 10 to 12 members will serve on each subcommittee — one for Jordan Middle School, which is named after David Starr Jordan, and one for Terman Middle School, which is named in part after Lewis Terman.
Superintendent Max McGee said he hopes to select committee members by June 20 and have them make recommendations in December.
The goal is to identify new names by February so the middle schools could open in the 2018-19 year bearing them, McGee said.
The school board will have a public hearing before adopting new names.
This past week, district officials sent a survey to students, parents and staff asking for possible names and received more than 300 responses that will be shared with the committees, McGee added.
According to district policy, the schools could be named after a person, a geographical place, an object or an idea.
The Renaming School Advisory Committee has recommended that the schools be named after individuals who have traits of “innovation, integrity and inclusion.”
“We should aim high and really be creative and strive to use this process to explore the full experience of being inclusive and celebratory of diversity in our community,” parent Sara Woodham-Johnsson said.
Woodham-Johnsson’s son, Kobi Johnsson, started the renaming movement when he focused his seventh-grade book report on Jordan and shared what he learned about the school’s namesake.
Board members agreed during Tuesday’s meeting that regardless of the new names, the schools must strive to explain whenever possible why they were renamed. Trustees discussed having a plaque at each school with that information but also indicated they’d like more to be done.