Waco ISD board pauses on renaming Cesar Chavez Middle School

Any discussion of a new name for Cesar Chavez Middle School likely will wait until the fall, with Waco ISD trustees saying they would like more time and less on their docket before taking up the issue.

After a presentation on the subject Thursday by Waco Independent School District Chief of Staff Elizabeth Cox, which included the district's naming guidelines and potential costs that would come with a name change, Trustee Jim Patton suggested the board wait until October or November take up the topic.

"I think we have so many more important things going on right now," Patton said.

He said board agendas in the fall generally are less crowded and would provide more time for trustees to consider any new name and how to fund the items that would need to be replaced or updated to reflect any change. His colleagues generally assented to the suggestion without a formal vote.

The question of renaming the middle school came up in March when allegations surfaced that Chavez, a once celebrated Hispanic labor activist who helped organize the United Farm Workers, had sexually abused women and girls in the 1960s and 1970s, including co-organizer Dolores Huerta.

The revelations, as reported by The New York Times, caused a wave of renaming facilities, holidays and events that carried Chavez's name. In Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott called on the removal of Chavez from state school curriculum with the Texas Education Agency ordering districts to comply.

Waco ISD's Cesar Chavez Middle School, which shares its name with Waco's Cesar Chavez Neighborhood Association, was one of two middle schools in Texas named after the labor organizer and one of eight public schools or academies with Chavez's name. Fort Worth ISD's state-appointed board of managers voted Tuesday to change their district's Cesar Chavez Elementary School to Esperanza Elementary School, esperanza being the Spanish word for "hope."

In March, Trustee Jose Vidaña, whose district includes the Waco school, said the board needed to discuss changing the school's name in light of the sexual abuse reports against Chavez.

The school was built to replace what was then University Middle School, part of a 2000 bond project package that also saw construction of a new West Avenue Elementary School.

In her report to the board, Cox said the board's policy on facility naming calls for campuses or facilities to be named after their community, a local geographic feature or area, or a person who has been dead at least a decade.

The policy allows exceptions for donors who make a "significant contribution" toward the construction or purchase of a facility. Parts of a facility, such as a library or an auditorium, may be named after distinguished staff members who worked more than 30 years for the district.

Should trustees agree to change a campus or facility's name, any district resident can suggest a name. The school board would have to approve a new name in votes during two consecutive meetings, Cox said. In the case of a partial facility naming, the school's Campus Decision-Making Council would have to recommend the change.

Changing a school's name would involve replacing or updating interior and exterior signs, instructional and operational materials, logos, digital platforms and websites and athletic uniforms.

Cox said the district recently replaced athletic uniforms at G.W. Carver Middle School and Tennyson Middle School as part of the bond package that funded their new facilities. The new uniforms cost an average of $80,000 per school.

In remarks after her report, Patton and Trustee Angelo Ochoa both referred to cost as a factor that the board would want to consider before changing a campus name.

The last Waco ISD school to be named was Indian Spring Middle School, named in 2012 in a 4-3 trustee vote that split over suggestions to honor Waco educator Alexander James Moore, whose name was used for the high school that originally operated in the facility that became Indian Spring Middle School.

Moore, a Paul Quinn College professor, in the 1870s organized lessons for Black youth who were denied other educational opportunities, an effort that gave rise to A.J. Moore High School. The school closed in 1971, replaced by Jefferson-Moore High School in the facility that became Indian Spring, and Waco ISD brought back the A.J. Moore name in the 1990s for an academy housed in the same facility before the academy merged with University High School in 2012.

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