Charlottesville City Schools moving forward with new names for existing institutions

Charlottesville City Schools have resumed a campaign to rebrand schools that have carried the names of people deemed by committee in recent years to no longer represent the agency’s values.

According to a press release sent out Monday morning, Venable Elementary School will become Trailblazer Elementary School and Clark Elementary School will become Summit Elementary at the beginning of the upcoming academic year. 

The School Board voted to rename both in January 2023 but held off on making the change out of concern the new names would confuse people looking for their polling place in the last election. (read my story)

Clark had been named for a Revolutionary War general and the new name represents both the mountain views and the school as a “gathering of leaders.” 

Venable had been named for a math professor at University of Virginia who served in the Confederate army. The new name honors the Charlottesville 12, a group of students who desegregated Venable Elementary and Lane High School. 

The new names are not yet reflected in school quality profiles issued by the Virginia Department of Education. Five of the city’s six elementary schools were listed as accredited in 2023, but Clark/Summit is accredited with conditions with achievement gaps noted for English and Mathematics as well as chronic absenteeism. 

Now that Charlottesville has purchased Albemarle County’s share of what had been a joint vocational school, that institution will be known as the Charlottesville Area Technical Education Center. (read my story from March 2023)

“When Charlottesville City Schools voted to acquire CATEC, the Board approved a slight name change to reflect the school’s mission to provide technical education in the area,” reads the press release.

The release does not have information about other names that are under review. The name Buford will be stripped from the middle school that is under construction in favor of the generic “Charlottesville Middle School.”

Buford Middle School is also accredited with conditions due to chronic absenteeism, achievement gaps in English and Mathematics, and an overall poor level for academic achievement in Science. 

According to the school system’s website, the process remains paused for Burnley-Moran and Johnson but the School Board voted in April 2023 that they should both have new names and sought community feedback.  

“A name with ‘purpose’ might be values-driven or aspirational,” reads the website. “A name filled with purpose would communicate our goal of helping students be their best selves and make our world better.”

According to community relations coordinator Amanda Korman, the renaming process has been refined and community engagement for new names will resume this year. 

At least one descendant of one of the name-sakes under consideration is against the idea. Chuck Moran spoke to Courteney Stuart on WINA last year about why he felt Burnley-Moran should continue to be named after his great aunt Sarepta Anna Moran. (take a listen)

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