Name changes and name calling. When will Fayette school board focus on real problems? | Opinion
Let’s say you’re the school board of the second-largest district in Kentucky, staring down staff cuts, disgruntled parents and a constitutional amendment on the ballot in November that could drain your coffers in no time flat.
What should be your next move?
“Ignite a culture war in Lexington” is the wrong answer.
Nonetheless, last week, the Fayette County school board entertained some suggestions from its Equity Committee on reviewing the names of eight schools.
Some of the proposals are utilitarian: Lexington Traditional Magnet School is no longer really a magnet school or focused on traditional instruction. It’s becoming an art school.
Dixie Elementary is the other school under immediate review. Down the line are Yates Elementary, Stonewall Elementary, Henry Clay High School, Squires Elementary, Breckinridge Elementary and Martin Luther King Academy.
Herald-Leader education reporter Valarie Honeycutt Spears explained how this came about:
“The potential name changes come after, in the fall of 2022, the Board of Education tasked an existing Equity Council Committee with recommending a school-naming policy that reflects the district’s current values. Then, the council was tasked with comparing current school names and mascots to see if they were in line with the policy, and recommending changes if they weren’t.”
The reaction as measured on social media has ranged from incandescent rage to weary despair, but my favorite one was this:
“Evidently, they have too much time on their hands and not enough to do.”
Yes, and we know this because also last week, the school board censured fellow board member Amanda Ferguson because she placed an emoji in the wrong place in her social media feed. She apologized, but apparently, that doesn’t count anymore.
It’s absolutely no accident that Ferguson is the board member most likely to push back and ask questions of Chair Tyler Murphy and Superintendent Demetrus Liggins.
And what is going on with the Equity Committee? They are tasked with the enormous and important job of figuring out the best ways to close Fayette’s yawning racial and economic achievement gaps.
Instead, they seem to be more focused on calling out a school board member for an improperly placed emoji on social media, and running off school board member Tom Jones for using a racial microaggression that he was unaware of and apologized for.
As regular readers of this column know, I am all for reexamining the historical record and determining how we think about it moving forward.
The Great Compromiser Henry Clay was a slave owner who refused to free them even as he worked to send them back to Africa. Take the tour at Ashland that describes how he treated the enslaved, and then let’s have a community discussion about whether that name should be on a school building.
But what matters much more than a name is the learning that goes on inside it. Half as many Black students at Henry Clay High School scored proficient/distinguished in reading on state test scores as their white counterparts. That’s what I call a macroaggression.
These trivial matters hurt the larger efforts. When people get mad about changing names, they are less open to larger discussions over race, history and injustice.
Murphy pushed back on Tuesday, saying that Dixie and LTMS are the only names immediately up to change, so there should not be concern about other names on the list, which have to go through a community process.
Nonetheless, the names are still on the list that the Equity Committee is looking at, and what the public is still not hearing about is why the school budget doesn’t have enough money for art teachers.
Fayette County Public Schools make up a good and functional district that keeps making unforced and ridiculous errors.
Murphy needs to convince the public the school board is as concerned with test scores as it is with titles and Twitter feeds.
This story was originally published August 12, 2024 at 12:40 PM.
