BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (KERO) \u2014 The Bakersfield City School District board unanimously voted Tuesday night to rename Cesar Chavez Elementary School as Helen F. Chavez Elementary.<\/p>\n
The decision followed the first public comments from a member of the Chavez family since allegations against Cesar Chavez surfaced earlier this year. During public comment, Cesar and Helen Chavez’s granddaughter, Barbara Ybarra, urged trustees to recognize her grandmother’s contributions to the farm worker movement.<\/p>\n
“She was a woman committed to a dream that became a movement. She was quiet, did not seek attention for her work, but was fiercely determined and committed,” Ybarra said.<\/p>\n
Ybarra described Helen Chavez as a former field laborer who helped support her family as a child and later became a driving force behind the United Farm Workers Movement. Several board members said they wanted the school’s new name to reflect Helen Chavez’s own legacy.<\/p>\n
“I want to name our school after a matriarch of the movement, of the farm workers,” BCSD board member Dr. Chris Cruz Boone said.<\/p>\n
Before speaking, Ybarra provided board members with an article detailing Helen Chavez’s life and accomplishments. One trustee read part of that article into the record.<\/p>\n
“Helen Chavez’s legacy stands on its own, and she is so much more than somebody’s wife. She was a farm worker, a community leader, financial advocate, and a champion for working families whose impact continues to be felt generations later,” BCSD board member Dr. Brooke Malley Ault said.<\/p>\n
The meeting also included concerns about how the renaming process unfolded. A member of the school’s renaming committee said community members submitted recommendations, and the committee spent months reviewing them, but the board ultimately chose to discuss 2 new options of its own \u2014 Helen F. Chavez and Si Se Puede.<\/p>\n
Board members acknowledged those concerns and said they would look at changing the process in the future to ensure community and committee recommendations remain part of the final discussion.<\/p>\n
The board also learned Si Se Puede was not a viable option after the district received a letter from the United Farm Workers Union explaining the phrase is trademarked and the district would need to purchase a license to use it.<\/p>\n
After the vote, Ybarra said she was grateful to see her grandmother’s contributions recognized.<\/p>\n
“She had that independent legacy and remembered for all of the work that she did as a co-architect of the movement here in the valley,” Ybarra said.<\/p>\n
BCSD plans to implement the name change to Helen F. Chavez by August of this year.<\/p>\n
This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.<\/p>\n
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