The head of the San Francisco school board has put on hold controversial plans to rename 44 schools until students are back on campus after months of virtual learning during the coronavirus pandemic.
Gabriela Lopez, the president of the board of education, announced the decision in Monday’s editions of the San Francisco Chronicle and on SFChronicle.com on Sunday.
“There have been many distracting public debates as we’ve been working to reopen our schools,” Lopez wrote. “School renaming has been one of them. It was a process begun in 2018 with a timeline that didn’t anticipate a pandemic. I acknowledge and take responsibility that mistakes were made in the renaming process.”
The board’s 6-1 vote in late January to remove the names of Abraham Lincoln, George Washington and other prominent figures from schools triggered debate over priorities and whether the process was too hasty.
A few days later, the city of San Francisco sued the San Francisco unified school district and the board to force the reopening of schools to students, citing a mental health crisis among school-age children for the need to return to schools. San Francisco teachers, like those in many big districts, are resisting a return to classrooms until they are vaccinated.
Since then, the issue of returning students to in-person learning has loomed ever larger as Covid-19 infection and hospitalization trends have greatly improved in California. San Francisco currently has the lowest case rate of any major city in the US, but while other cities have reopened their schools either fully or on a hybrid schedule, San Francisco has not.
Lopez said reopening will be the “only focus” until children are back in school and that renaming committee meetings were being canceled for the time being. She also said the there would be a “more deliberative process” in the future, including engaging historians from nearby universities.
“We recognize we need to slow down,” she wrote. “And we need to provide more opportunities for community input. We are working with educators at all levels to involve and educate our school communities about the renaming process. We are realizing, especially now, it will take time and energy to get that right.”
The board’s January resolution called for removing names that honored historical figures with direct or broad ties to slavery, oppression, racism or the “subjugation” of human beings.
In addition to Washington and Thomas Jefferson, two former presidents who owned slaves, the list includes the naturalist John Muir, the Spanish missionary Junípero Serra, the revolutionary war hero Paul Revere and Francis Scott Key, who wrote The Star Spangled Banner.
The name of Dianne Feinstein, the California senator whose star has faded among some liberals, also would be removed from an elementary school under the plan.