Pirate Born, Pirate Bred, PHOENIX Pirate Till I'm Dead.

School Board Sneakiness?

One of the big stories locally, or at least in my little neck of the woods here in southern Oregon, is the attempt of the school district that I attended, Phoenix-Talent School District, to have not only the district's name changed, but also the names of the high school and middle school. Until I read about it on Facebook a few days ago, I didn't even know such an attempt was afoot. Now there is a firestorm of criticism by many of the alumni of PHS and TMS who believe the names should not be changed, at least not for the high school and middle school.

Yesterday, the local newspaper, the Medford Mail Tribune, which is under a paywall, had this to say about the proposed name changes:

More than 50 names and combinations were considered by a naming committee made up of school board members, administrators, teachers, a student representative and local marketing professionals. The committee's first step was to unanimously support a suggestion to drop "school district" as part of the new name in favor of simply "schools."

The four names under consideration are Rogue South Schools, South Valley Schools, South Rogue Schools and South Rogue Valley Schools.

Phoenix High School and Talent Middle School will adopt the preferred new first name, while the names of Talent Elementary, Phoenix Elementary and Orchard Hill Elementary will remain the same, accompanied b the new district name.

...

Phoenix High and Talent Middle students will have an opportunity to pick their favorite name by means of a written ballot vote on Monday, May 7.

Parents, alumni, school supporters and other community members can cast their votes at 7 p.m. Wednesday, May 16 at Phoenix High School, 745 N. Rose St., and 7 p.m. Thursday, May 17, at Talent Middle school, 102 Christian Ave.

The school board will review and approve the new name at its June 7 meeting.

What kills me is there is no room on the ballots to leave the current names as they are. Now there is a campaign to write in the names "Phoenix High School" and "Talent Middle School."

There is also an online petition available.

I picked one of the messages on the petition as the title of this post. I loved it.