A sculpture of labor leader Cesar Chavez stands uncovered earlier this month in the downtown Sacramento park that was named after him in the 1990s. A renaming process for the park is underway after allegations of sexual misconduct surfaced against the prominent civil rights activist.
HECTOR AMEZCUA
hamezcua@sacbee.com
Sacramento City Unified approved the start of the renaming process for Cesar E. Chavez Elementary on Thursday, kicking off what the district expects to be a roughly three-month process to select a new name.
The decision came roughly six months after The New York Times published an investigation detailing allegations of sexual misconduct against the prominent labor and civil rights activist.
“Recent information, unfortunately, has come out around Cesar Chavez’s personal conduct that definitely is not consistent with that standard,” said Nathaniel Browning, the district’s facilities director.
The school, located in Sacramento’s Meadowview neighborhood, first opened in 2000 and has an enrollment of about 800 students.
Sacramento City Unified’s effort to rename Cesar Chavez Elementary follows a wave of renamings sparked by the investigation. In June, Davis Joint Unified changed the name of its Cesar Chavez Elementary School to Monarca Elementary.
One focus of the discussion during Thursday’s regular board meeting was whether the community should be allowed to name the school after another individual, despite a district staff proposal to prohibit names of individuals.
“I do think there’s some power to naming schools after an individual,” said a board trustee Jasjit Singh, arguing that the community should decide whether that person reflected its shared values. Trustee Michael Benjamin echoed Singh’s suggestion, supporting keeping open the possibility of honoring a local hero whose contributions were well known to the community.
The board ultimately approved the process with a caveat that staff bring back any community-supported individual name that meets district policy.
The district plans to choose a new name by December and complete the rebranding by June 2027, ahead of the 2027-28 school year, according to Browning. The renaming, expected to cost up to $12,000, will be funded through a restricted fund from property sales, he added.
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Chaewon Chung is an education reporter for The Sacramento Bee. She has previously covered climate and environmental issues, focusing on energy and water. Before joining The Bee, she worked as a climate and environment reporter at the Winston-Salem Journal in North Carolina.