Abraham Lincoln statues

[David Lockmiller]

It’s Liberals vs. Liberals in San Francisco After Schools Erase Contested Names

New York Times By Thomas Fuller
Jan. 28, 2021

Incredulous parents and the mayor criticized the school board’s decision to change the names of 44 schools that honor historical figures like Jefferson, Lincoln and Paul Revere.

On the list were schools named after George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Francis Scott Key, for their ownership of slaves; Abraham Lincoln, for the 1862 execution of 38 Dakota tribesmen; and Dianne Feinstein, California’s senior senator, because a stolen Confederate flag outside City Hall was replaced in 1984, when she was mayor of San Francisco.

Even more scathing was the San Francisco Chronicle editorial board, which wrote that members of the Board of Education had “largely quit the education business and rebranded themselves as amateur historians.”

Dr. Adam Davis, a pediatrician in San Francisco who has a son in kindergarten and a daughter in second grade, said he was receiving text messages from friends in Boston ridiculing the changes.

“I don’t know anybody personally who doesn’t think it’s embarrassing,” Dr. Davis said. The renaming, he said, “is a caricature of what people think liberals in San Francisco do.”

On Facebook and Twitter, parents said they were worried about the cost of the renaming — estimates for changing signage, paperwork and websites for the 44 schools run into the millions — and how it will worsen the district’s already strained finances. The name changes were done without community input and took priority over reopening schools, parents said.