\u201cThe school on Third Street\u201d \u2014 that\u2019s what some parents are calling C\u00e9sar Chavez Elementary School after recent reporting revealed the labor activist\u2019s sexual abuse of girls and women.<\/p>\n
Now, Long Beach Unified is taking steps to consider renaming it and other campuses with controversial namesakes. School board members on Wednesday directed the superintendent to reconstitute an advisory committee on naming, restarting a stalled process to evaluate current names and suggest new ones. Some parents and administrators say it\u2019s overdue.<\/p>\n
During the public comment period at Wednesday\u2019s school board meeting, Li Yun Alvarado, a parent of students at Chavez Elementary, addressed the board with a question: \u201cShould an LBUSD school remain named after a pedophile?\u201d<\/p>\n
Alvarado said it was particularly painful to see Long Beach move slowly while other school districts across the state \u2014 including Los Angeles Unified<\/a> \u2014 answered that question with a \u201cresounding absolutely not,\u201d and she pressed the school board and district to take swifter action. Survivors of Chavez\u2019s sexual violence \u201cresemble the mamis, t\u00edas and abuelas of the majority of the students at our downtown dual-immersion school,\u201d she said, impressing on the board that for some families, the issue is personal.<\/p>\n LBUSD has already taken steps at Chavez Elementary: offering support to the school community and removing murals referencing the disgraced labor leader. Yet board member Juan Benitez, whose downtown district includes the school, recognized it wasn\u2019t enough. He requested that the district and naming committee prioritize addressing Chavez \u2014 ideally before next school year, he said.<\/p>\n Chavez Elementary is not the only school whose name students, staff and parents are advocating to change. \u201cWe have schools where staff won\u2019t wear the school name on their chest because they don\u2019t support the values of the people that our schools are named after,\u201d said Deputy Superintendent Tiffany Brown.<\/p>\n While there is urgency around changing the name of Chavez Elementary because of recent news coverage, \u201cwe have similar sentiment in other parts of our community that haven\u2019t come forward in the same way,\u201d Brown said.<\/p>\n Several years ago, Stanford Middle School teacher Hank Waddles told the school board that 20 of the district\u2019s 72 schools bear the names of problematic figures \u2014 including men who enslaved African Americans and led massacres of Indigenous people in California. A third of the district\u2019s students take classes in those 20 buildings, he said.<\/p>\n In years past<\/a>, Long Beach residents have pushed for name changes to some of these, including Wilson and Jordan high schools. (Advocates have cited Woodrow Wilson\u2019s racism and David Starr Jordan\u2019s acceptance of eugenics.) Yet the advisory committee on naming disbanded in 2015, and aside from the 2016 rechristening of Robert E. Lee Elementary to Olivia Nieto Herrera Elementary<\/a> and International Elementary to Jenny Oropeza Elementary<\/a>, little has come from the public pressure for new school names.<\/p>\n That may be starting to shift. Benitez hopes the changes will not be in name only, and he suggested lessons and curriculum on current farmworkers and the contributions of women to their labor movement.<\/p>\n