Austin ISD votes to change name of Robert E. Lee Elementary (TX)

[struggle4progress]

AUSTIN - The Austin ISD Board of Trustees voted 8-0 with one abstaining Monday night to change the name of Robert E. Lee Elementary School ...

Numerous parents at the school have .. demanded that the school -- currently named after Confederate General Robert E. Lee -- get a name change ...

The district will accept ideas from the public on a new name for the school ...

http://www.kvue.com/news/education/aisd-votes-to-change-name-of-robert-e-lee-elementary/106005815

[struggle4progress]

1. Lee Elementary May Be Renamed, But Divisions Remain on Austin's Other Confederate-Named Schools

By KATE MCGEE • 12 HOURS AGO

... Just six and a half percent of AISD teachers are black, and Gordon is the only African American school board member. He thinks that’s one reason why the school district and other school communities haven’t pushed harder to change the name of the other three schools named after Confederate leaders: John Reagan High School, Sidney Lanier High School, and Eastside Memorial at the Johnston Campus.

“If the school district was majority African American, the names would’ve been changed a long time ago,” he says. “And that would not have required a whole lot of discussion and back and forth and up and down and convincing this, that and the other thing” ...

“No one seems to be concerned about having a real conversation about why it was that these schools were named after these folks, what it meant at the time for them to be named that way," Gordon says ...

Saldaña says even though the African American student population is small, 75 percent of students in Austin public schools are students of color ...

http://kut.org/post/lee-elementary-may-be-renamed-divisions-remain-austins-other-confederate-named-schools

[malokvale77]

2. Good...

I wish my old school district in Dallas would follow.

[marble falls]

3. About freaking time. Thanks for finding this, I live near Austin and somehow I misse it.