Palo Alto school board set to strip schools of eugenicists’ names – The Mercury News

A yearlong campaign to rename two Palo Alto middle schools, whose namesakes promoted the eugenics movement, will go before the school board for a formal vote Friday with nearly unanimous support from trustees.

Four out of five school board members said Tuesday they were ready to vote on the topic and plan to cast votes to rename Jordan Middle School and Terman Middle School.

Trustee Todd Collins did not say how his vote was affectedby the 50 or so students, parents, alumni and community members who attended Tuesdays meeting. At a meeting on the topic the week before, he indicated support for renaming Jordan schoolbut had some doubts about renaming Terman.

Some speakers advocated for a name change classifying the eugenics movement and its advocates as racist and out of line with the districts values of diversity, equity and inclusion.

A few students made passionate pleas about how it hurts them knowing theyre going to a school named after someone who likely thinks they are inferior because of their race or disabilities.

Some parents said they support the majority recommendation of the Renaming Schools Advisory Committee to rename the schools, but suggested that perhaps this is not the year to take such action because of the districts $3.3 million budget shortfall. Cost projections for the changes range from $50,000 to $200,000.

Other speakers, including a few committee members, oppose the renaming, stating either that they are against judging David Starr Jordan and Lewis Terman out of the context of the era in which themen lived or that renaming the schools will erase the positive relationshipalumni have to their alma maters.

Collins asked to continue the meeting to another day so that the board has adequate time to discuss the topic and explain their votes.

I would really like the opportunity to collect my thoughts and be able to understand and listen to the comments of my colleagues and vote appropriately, Collins said, and I think its very hard to do that at 10:30 at night after seven hours of meetings today.

Collins acknowledged the importance of the matter and the patience of the community, but also pointed out that the matter is not urgent.

Trustee Melissa Baten Caswell said she feels ready to make a decision, having received extensive community feedback from hundreds of people for the last year and a half.

Trustee Jennifer DiBrienza also said the board should make a decision Tuesday for the publics sake.

Our community is ready to move forward, DiBrienza said.

Board members eventually agreed to continue the meeting for the integrity of the process.

The board is expected to meet at 1 p.m. at the district office, 25 Churchill Ave., to discuss the issue and vote.

If the board accepts the committees recommendations, then it will also have to decide the best approach to renaming the schools.

The board will consider whether to form a new committee to come up with three new names for the schools by Jan. 1, 2018 and whether to approve funding for a curriculum for students about the history and impact of the eugenics movement that would start in the second semester of the 2017-18 school year.

The board doesnt plan to take further comments from the public at the meeting since its a continuation of Tuesdays meeting. The topic also was open to public discussion at length during a March 7 meeting dedicated to the matter.

After an eight-month review, the majority of the 13-member Renaming Schools Advisory Committee concluded in December that the district should rename Jordan and Terman middle schools and Cubberley Community Center.

Four committee members offered a compromise and said Jordan Middle School should keep its name with the clarification that the school is no longer named after David Starr Jordan.

Three committee members said Terman also could retain its name by rededicating the school to be named after only Frederick Terman and not his father, Lewis Terman.

The senior Termanwas a Stanford psychologist who actively supported eugenics. Proponents of eugenics believed the human race could be improved through selective reproduction including forced sterilization.

The younger Terman was an engineer and Stanford University provost who hired Jewish professors and pioneered recruiting students from underrepresented communities.

Some committee members wrote a minority opinion that said the schools should retain their names because the names have meaning beyond honoring their namesakes.

Continuity and tradition are important and form a tapestry of identity for our community, these committee members said.

Collins said at the March 7 board meeting that the concern about renaming Terman is that it unfairly condemns Frederick Terman for the beliefs of his father with guilty by association.

One community member who spoke Tuesday against the renaming drew parallels to censorship and asked if the community supported censoring parts in Huckleberry Finn because of its racist language. Is the community repeating history by blacklisting and judging Jordan and Terman for their flaws?

The majority of community members, however, support the renaming effort.

Names and symbols matter, Superintendent Max McGee said Tuesday. We are not erasing history, we are facing it.

The district, which received more than 200 emails on the topic, has been chided with being politically correct as well as failing to stand up to a history that is antithetical to the districts values.

McGee said he supports the committees recommendations, including incorporating the history and consequences of the countrys eugenics movement, and Palo Alto and Stanford Universitys roles, into class curriculum.

Though Jordan was an accomplished scientist and Stanford Universitys first president, he was also an active and highly effective leader in promoting the betterment of the human race by sterilization, McGee said.

It is hard to imagine the countless PAUSD students who would not have even have been born if eugenics thinking, policies and practices as widely and deeply articulated by Mr. Jordan had become as prevalent as he desired, McGee said.

Jordans legacy was the subject of a book report by one of these students, Kobi Johnsson.

More than a year ago, as a seventh-grade student at Jordan Middle School, Johnsson decided to learn more about the man his school was named after. What he learned, and shared with his parents and classmates, started the community effort to rename the school.

Johnsson said he finds it astounding that the debate over renaming the schools has lasted this long, and that he doesnt understand what stands in the way.

Its pretty obvious that these people are bad people, that what they did wasnt right, Johnsson said. If you were forcibly sterilized by anybody, you would not like that you wouldnt want something as commemorative as a school to be named after this.

Johnsson said eugenicists likely would have labeled him feeble-minded and wanted himsterilized and this goes against the values of the Palo Alto community.

I dont want to go to a school, I dont want to say I went to a school, thatwas named after somebody like this, Johnsson said.

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Palo Alto school board set to strip schools of eugenicists' names - The Mercury News