Change to controversial name of school unlikely
Trustee makes last-ditch attempt to get board to revisit decision
Kingsville and area students will attend Erie Migration Academy school in the fall unless a lastditch effort by trustee Linda Qin to change the name succeeds.
Near the end of Tuesday night's meeting of the Greater Essex County District School Board, after attempts by other trustees to revisit the name failed, Qin introduced a notice of motion “to examine the naming procedure of Erie Migration Academy and appraise the corresponding consequences to the board.”
Board chair Gale Hatfield said she wasn't sure the motion was in order, but said she would “review it and advise.”
Erie Migration Academy was chosen at a Feb. 20 board meeting despite it not being one of the two names suggested by a public consultation process.
Attempts were made at Tuesday's meeting by Qin, student trustee Colin Pyne and fellow board members Nancy Armstrong and Cathy Cooke to revisit the name. None succeeded.
The nuance of Qin's motion is significant, since only a trustee who voted in favour of the name on Feb. 20 can introduce a motion to reconsider the name. Qin voted against it. There was no indication Tuesday night on when a decision on the acceptability of Qin's motion will be made.
The new school in Kingsville opens in September.
The name has been the subject of considerable controversy in Kingsville, because it was introduced at last month's board meeting by Kingsville trustee Julia Burgess and voted on without prior knowledge from the public.
Many residents have said they want “Kingsville” retained in the school name and that Erie Migration Academy has an unfortunate vulgar acronym that is well-known among young people.
The outcome of Tuesday's meeting wasn't popular with some, including the 100 or so people in the audience who applauded several citizens who spoke out at the meeting in favour of rescinding the chosen name.
“I felt that the board was being extremely dismissive to speakers, as well as trustees trying to get rid of the name,” Kingsville District High School graduate Angelina Ward said later.
Appearing as a delegation earlier in the meeting, she presented a 2,000-name petition, received by student trustee Colin Pyne, asking the board to reconsider.
The acronym is a major issue for students, Ward said after the meeting.
“If you're playing on a sports team and you have EMA on your jersey, you are a constant source of ridicule for the other team,” she said.
“It's already a joke for everybody,” said Sean Lambier, who earlier had accompanied Ward to the podium during her speech to the board. “People have gone up and said the joke proudly in front of everyone watching.
“So, everyone knows it, even all the adults I've met knew it. It's not going to go away if the name stays the same. It's just going to be a joke forever.”
Ward said the property the school sits on is ancestral land of the Caldwell First Nation, which was not consulted in the process and that the word “Erie” was not a name associated with the First Nation but rather a “settler name.”
When the new school name was chosen at the last board meeting, trustee Burgess noted that “Erie” is an Indigenous word from the Haudenosaunee language. Kinsey Kendrick and Emmerson Jadischke — both Grade 11 students at Kingsville District Secondary School which closes at the end of this school year — said after the meeting they felt ignored by trustees during their earlier delegation to the board.
“They kind of ignored all of the speakers,” said Kendrick, who was on the school naming committee. “Every time a motion was brought up, it was just shut down.”
Jadischke noted the recent community backlash.
“We had many walkouts and there's a bunch of letters from the community,” she told the Star. “I just feel really misheard because we continue to speak out about this and nothing's being done about it, which is just really frustrating.”
Kendrick and Jadischke also said the acronym is a major issue.
“That I feel is the biggest thing that our high schoolers have really caught on to ... the acronym and how it portrays our school,” said Kendrick. “I could picture that bringing a lot of ridicule. When you're at a sports game, you're already chanting ... and you're trying to get under each other's skin. And this is just one easy way for the other schools to get under our skin with our acronym. That's very obvious and very out there.”
“Even people in London and Hamilton and even Toronto ... know about the acronym,” said Jadischke, “It's just become a big joke and we don't want our school name to be a big joke.”
Burgess said during the meeting the person who vetted the name was not aware of the meaning of the EMA acronym. “We missed it,” she said.
Student trustee Pyne said after the meeting he would like to see the best decision for the students:
“I would like to see students feel as though they are listened to and not have to reach out to me because they were not heard.”
Kingsville's deputy mayor, Kimberly Deyong — “an alumni of two Kingsville schools and as a parent of two current students” — also appeared as a delegation in opposition to the chosen name.
She detailed the exemplary history of James King, after whom the town was named. She also noted that in the 660 name suggestions from the public, Erie and Migration were mentioned six times, and Kingsville was mentioned in more than 50 per cent of suggestions. Deyong also said people “overwhelmingly would rather use the obvious word `school' ... over the ill-fitting word `academy,' which is typically used to refer to a private high school.”
The name Erie Migration Academy has spawned a “community backlash with a name that will humiliate our children,” she said, urging trustees to include Kingsville in the school name.
Harrow resident Alexis Tindall, a student at Kingsville District Secondary School, told trustees residents of her community were not against having Kingsville in the name. The proposed new name's acronym, she added, “has already become a source of ridicule ... leading to a social mockery.”
Trustees did, however, agree to a motion by Burgess's motion to send the school naming procedure back to the policy committee for examination.