Should School Systems Change the Names of Controversial Schools?

With all the issues that have been brought to surface in terms of racial indiscretion, racist remarks, and police brutality towards the black demographic, amongst them has arisen the idea of renaming schools whose names originate from Confederate leaders and slave owners.

On July 14, 2020, “The Montgomery County Board of Education voted Tuesday night to rename three Montgomery high schools,” says a WSFA12 News article. The three schools to get renamed were Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee and Sidney Lanier high schools. While many were pleased with these changes, Lizzy Francis, writes in a Fatherly article that “No school in the U.S should be named after those who would have enslaved other human beings,” which lots of others concur with.

While visions such as Francis’ would be ideal, they are not realistic and should not be our number one priority for school systems today. Montgomery County alone currently has six known schools that are named after slave owners. These schools include Montgomery Blair High, Francis Scott Key Middle, Col. Zadok Magruder High, Richard Montgomery High, John Pool Middle, and Thomas S. Wootton High. Imagine how much time it would take just to get the names of all these schools in our county changed, let alone all the Confederate and slave owner named schools across the US! 

While it is apparent that changing the names of schools will in fact give students a better representative name sake, it will not undo the past nor fix the problems transpiring in our schools today. According to a 2019-2020 MCPS summary on county schools, the MCPS school district inhabits over 165,000 students, with approximately 21.4% of the student population being black and 26.9% of students falling under the white demographic. While these percentages don’t fall too far apart from each other, the MCPS high school graduation rate for each of the two demographics shows that black students are still trailing behind their white peers. For the class of 2019, “White and asian students graduated at the highest rates, both around 95%….while black students had a 90% graduation rate,” stated a Feb. 25, 2020 Bethesda Magazine article. 

Not only this, but Black students are also getting suspended at much higher rates than white students. According to a Bethesda article, MCPS suspension data shows that “80% of all suspensions over the past three school years were of Black and Hispanic students.” So I ask you, should we be more concerned about altering decades-century old school names, or would it be a better use of our time to instead find ways in which we can better support black students both academically and emotionally in order to close the opportunity gap and diminish the overall racist culture and toxicity still present in our schools today? 

In addition to the vast amount of time being expended on renaming schools instead of helping better accommodate black students so that they feel well acclimated and welcome in school, there is also the financial component of this process that needs to be taken into consideration. When renaming schools, it is not just a one and done process. By changing the names of schools, each school would have to get completely redone and rebranded to match its new name sake. This would potentially mean renovating millions of dollars worth of school properties. This money would be so much better spent going towards things that would actually benefit the Black Lives Matter movement and support black students, such as updated curriculums that shed light on whitewashed history that is not currently taught in our schools, and hiring more black therapists and counselors that can better sympathize and relate with black students. 

Covering up the past is not going to make a difference. By changing the names of these schools, we are only sending the message that such unspeakable acts can be erased. This generation needs to be taught not to try and erase the past and such mistakes after the damage has been done, but to be better, rise above, and not make them in the first place.

Article by Alexandra Doncheva of Richard Montgomery High School

Graphic by Cathy Boman of Winston Churchill High School

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