Emily Hays Photo
The Fair Haven school currently named after Christopher Columbus.
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Teacher Irene Logan: Let’s represent the diversity of our students.
Should Columbus Family Academy’s new name represent all the ethnicities at the school? Should it make a statement about indigenous history? Should it keep “family academy” for continuity’s sake?
A committee of teachers, parents, students and community leaders has eight weeks to settle these questions.
“I hope we get to something that reconciles instead of compromises. I really dislike compromises, because it leaves everybody unhappy. I hope we get to something that renames the school with the dignity and respect that the children deserve,” said Carlos Torre, one of the committee’s three chairs.
Those questions arose Tuesday evening at the first meeting of the New Haven Board of Education’s reconstituted School Facility Naming Committee.
Over the next two months, the committee plans to select no more than two new names for the K‑8 school currently named after Christopher Columbus. The board then makes the final decision on the school’s new name.
The school has been in renaming limbo since last summer, when the Board of Education decided to change the school’s name as part of a citywide and nationwide reckoning with the 15th-century explorer’s violent legacy.
Not long after, the board adopted a new renaming policy. The new policy mandated that the renaming committee include students, parents, teachers, paraprofessionals, food service professionals and others from the school under debate. Tuesday was the first (virtual) meeting of this new group.
The group plans to meet weekly on Tuesday evenings at 6 p.m.
The first meeting was less formal than later meetings will be, according to board member Tamiko Jackson-McArthur. Jackson-McArthur organized the committee alongside board President Yesenia Rivera.
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Teacher Irene Logan: Let’s represent the diversity of our students.
Instead of a formal agenda, committee members introduced themselves one by one and described what they hope emerges from the process.
Veteran Columbus Family Academy teacher Irene Logan asked the committee to focus on a name that represents the school’s student body.
“We have a very diverse community. I would love to see a name that doesn’t represent one specific ethnicity but a name that can bring all together,” Logan said. “When people say that name, they know exactly what we stand for.”
Parent Fatima Rojas: Let’s represent our indigenous backgrounds.
Parent Fatima Rojas described choosing Columbus Family Academy for its bilingual program. As someone who grew up in Mexico, she wanted her children to speak Spanish as well as English. (She noted that Spanish exists in Mexico because of colonization, and that her family’s truly indigenous language is Nahuatl.)
She found many of child’s peers to be from other indigenous communities — Puerto Rican descendants of the Taíno, Guatemalan students, Ecuadorian students, Black students …
“Remember that we are on Quinnipiac land. There are no schools with that heritage at the front lines. That is something I’m hoping to bring. I’m hoping we can work together, through consensus, to represent indigenous people,” Rojas said.
(Quinnipiac Real World Magnet Math STEM School is closing at the end of this year.)
First grade English teacher Debbie Pires said she hopes to represent some of the school’s philosophies in the new name, from bilingual education to play-based learning to its emphasis on community.
“I would love to keep ‘Family Academy.’ We build relationships with students and parents. If we keep ‘family,’ the community would still remember which school it used to be and that it’s a family,” Pires said.
The committee has two student representatives. One, Charly Huinac, found his way to the meeting in its last minutes. Huinac has attended Columbus Family Academy since preschool and finds it hard to comprehend a new name. Still, he understands why the renaming is important and is for the idea.
“We’re trying to put out there that everybody has a chance and everybody is equal,” Huinac said.
Great art on the roof. How about just "Explorers' Academy" or some such name, as all students are explorers in some fashion or another. As Rojas says, none of New Haven's present inhabitants are indigenous, as the Quinnipiac removed to NYS. Her race may be indigenous to Mexico, but she is not indigenous in New Haven, nor are the Puerto Ricans, Ecuadorians, Guatemalans, or blacks, any more than those of European descent are.