The San Francisco School Board has announced Tuesday its decision to remove the names of key historical figures from 44 of its schools, eliciting a lot of criticism from legislators and parents themselves.
According to a report by the San Francisco Gate, the decision came after years of debate to remove the names of historical figures who have any relation so slavery, are racists, or human rights violations.
The Daily Mail UK, on the other hand, reported that the school board's decision was not an arbitrary decision mainly influenced by the recent protests born from the death of George Floyd but actually "came after the 2017 death of Heather Heyer at the hands of white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia."
In 2018, the schoolboard established a task force "to study the names of district schools and determine which ones would be replaced, as calls mounted to replace those of historicial figures tied to slavery."
The taskforce then created a volunteer panel that reviewed the names of 144 schools in the district and from this came the recommendation to remove those belonging to the 44 schools.
Of the historical names to be removed, the San Francisco school board have enlisted Alamo, Edwin Bryant, Pedro De Alvarado, Vasco Nunez De Balboa, Don Antonio De Ulloa, James Denman, Mission Dolores, El Dorado, Edward Everett, Dianne Feinstein, James Garfield, William Henry Grattan, Herbert Hoover, Edward Hyde, Francis Scott Key, Henry Ware Lawton, Claire Lilienthal, James Lick, James Lowell, James Wilson Marshall, Frank McCoppin, William McKinley, James Monroe, John Muir, Noriega, Jose Ortega, Presidio, Paul Revere, Jose Bernardo Sanchez, Gen. Philip Sheridan, Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman, Junipero Serra, John Sloat, Robert Louis Stevenson, Robert F. STockton, Adolph Sutro, and Daniel Webster.
Notably, the list of names that will be removed as per the Board's decision include that of Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt.
The schools whose names were to be changed have until April 2021 to come up with a replacement based on guidelines provided by the San Francisco school board, the San Francisco Gate said in its report.
"It's a message to our families, our students and our community. It's not just symbolic," San Francisco board member Mark Sanchez explained to the San Francisco Chronicle in an interview.
San Francisco Mayor London Breed, as per San Francisco Gate, criticized the move of the school board and called it "offensive."
'It's offensive to parents who are juggling their children's daily at-home learning schedules with doing their own jobs and maintaining their sanity. It's offensive to me as someone who went to our public schools, who loves our public schools, and who knows how those years in the classroom are what lifted me out of poverty and into college. It's offensive to our kids who are staring at screens day after day instead of learning and growing with their classmates and friends," Breed pointed out.
"This is an important conversation to have, and one that we should involve our communities, our families, and our students. What I cannot understand is why the School Board is advancing a plan to have all these schools renamed by April, when there isn't a plan to have our kids back in the classroom by then," Breed said Wednesday in a statement.
"Let's bring the same urgency and focus on getting our kids back in the classroom, and then we can have that longer conversation about the future of school names," she added.
The Daily Mail said critics found the board's move as inappropriate since it did not give any credence to the historical context of those being removed due to their flaws that were based on Wikipedia's account instead of actual historians and as impractical for not focusing on what is more urgent such as the reopening of schools.
Wikipedia, which hails itself as a "Free Encyclopedia," indicates in its Terms of Use that anyone can "contribute to and edit" the content shown in its pages. It does not moderate or fact-check the content users add; rather, it simply "hosts" them - which could mean that those with malicious intent can add false information to mislead readers..
Other critics cited the costs this decision will entail considering the district's budget deficit that's estimated to reach $75 million for the next school year. The costs entailed, in particular, involve a $400,000 signage replacement that excludes expenses for "new uniforms and gymnasium floors," the Daily Mail UK said.
This is not the first time historical figures such as Thomas Jefferson, George Washington and Abraham Lincoln have been targeted, CBN News reported. Washington D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser created a committee which recommended the same action last year. It also called on the federal government to "remove, relocate or contextualize" federal memorials and monuments such as the Washington Monument, a statue of Benjamin Franklin and the Jefferson Memorial.
If anything, this latest decision seems to be part of what Ben Carson referred to as a "coordinated" historical revisionism from the Left.
