San Francisco reverses plan to purge 'racist and sexist' historic names from schools

A third of the district’s 121 schools were earmarked for change due to their problematic namesakes

San Francisco School Names (Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)

San Francisco has scrapped plans to rebrand 44 schools it says were named after historical and political figures accused of engaging in slavery, sexism, genocide or other forms of oppression.

Personalities to receive a stay of execution from school rebranding include past presidents Abraham Lincoln, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, as well as current Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein and Scottish novelist Robert Louis Stevenson, author of Treasure Island.

The city's Board of Education on Tuesday voted to formally rescind the list of school name changes amid criticism for focusing on activism at the expense of returning children to in-person classes. The list of names itself, meanwhile, was lampooned for poor research and historical inaccuracies.

But while the current form of the proposal has been put on hold, the resolution states that a new panel will be formed to create a new list of school names once students return to in-person learning for full school weeks.

"The Board is deeply grateful for the work of the Panel, but wishes to avoid the distraction and wasteful expenditure of public funds in frivolous litigation," the resolution said.

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The school board had been sued by the city of San Francisco and a parent of a student at one of the public schools in the renaming crosshairs.

Attorney Paul Scott argued that the renaming decision did not involve the community and therefore violated California's open meeting law. A San Francisco court ordered the board to rescind the vote and dissolve the renaming committee by 16 April.

San Francisco Mayor London Breed called the push to rename the schools in January as children remained at home during the Covid pandemic "offensive and completely unacceptable", according to the Associated Press.

Included on the list was the Alamo Elementary School, named after the Spanish word for "poplar tree" but earmarked for erasure after being confused with the battle of the Alamo, a siege of the garrison by the Mexican army during the Texas Revolution.

The renaming panel also accused Paul Revere of attempting to colonise the Penobscot, an indigenous tribe. Mr Revere is better known for the midnight warning to American revolutionaries that the British were coming by sea.

Also destined for renaming was Feinstein Elementary for the veteran lawmaker’s supposed support of slavery, based on her time as mayor of the city in 1984 in which she replaced a vandalised Confederate flag.