(NewsWorthy.news) – Late last week, a Virginia school board voted to reinstate school names that were previously changed due to their resonance with Confederate leaders.
The Shenandoah County school board in Old Dominion’s rural Shenandoah Valley made the historic decision during a morning meeting on Friday May 10. It came four years after the county first removed school names that honored three Confederate generals.
Mountain View High School was renamed Stonewall Jackson High School and Ashby Lee Elementary has been restored from its previous name change to Honey Run Elementary School. Both institutions had their original names scrubbed in 2021, amid the surge in sentiment against police and Civil War figures who led the southern military efforts. It also followed the 2020 death of George Floyd and subsequent nationwide protests.
The vote, which passed the resolution 5-1 last week, reversed the 2020 decision and stands in stark contrast to the trend to remove all historical resonance of the Civil War in the south. Virginia has been particularly impacted by the movement, with dozens of schools in the state having been renamed and Confederate memorials being controversially removed.
The four members of the board who sided with reinstating the original names have said that the school district’s preceding board had failed to acknowledge due process and popular opinion when removing the names.
During the lengthy meeting that resulted in the name changes, board member Gloria Carlineo stated that those who oppose Confederate names must “stop bringing racism” into every decision as it takes away from “true cases of racism.” Even the one dissenting member, Kyle Gutshall, acknowledged understanding for both sides of the “complex issue” but maintained that most of the residents in his district supported the 2020 name changes.
The school names now honor Jackson, a Virginia general famous for his actions in the Battle of Bull Run, cavalry officer Turner Ashby who died in the Civil War near Harrisonburg, Virginia, and General Robert E. Lee, the famous Virginian who led the Confederate army.
Copyright 2024, NewsWorthy.news
