SHENANDOAH COUNTY, Va. (WAVY) — The Shenandoah County School Board voted 5-1 early Friday morning to restore Confederate names to two schools there after they had previously been renamed four years earlier.
Mountain View High School will, as a result, once again be known as Stonewall Jackson High School, while Honey Run Elementary School will again be called Ashby-Lee Elementary School, named for Turner Ashby and Robert E. Lee. Both schools are in Quicksburg, in the southern end of the county.
The yes votes came from board Chairman Dennis Barlow, Thomas Streett, Gloria Carlineo, Brandi Rutz and Michael Rickard. Board Vice Chairman Kyle Gutshall voted no. Board members supportive of changing the names of the schools back to what they were originally said the process to change the names in 2020 was rushed and did not have sufficient public input.
“It was not done properly,” Streett said. “It was done in a secretive [manner] in only nine days.” He called the vote to change the name in 2020 “a knee-jerk reaction.” Carlineo said her decision to change the names back came down to the process in how the two schools’ names were changed in the first place, saying it was done “under the cover of COVID.”
Gutshall called it a complex issue and said his district was overwhelmingly in favor of retaining the current names, and not reverting back to the Confederate names for the schools.
Streett made the motion for the name change, and Carlineo seconded it.
The request to change the names back to their previous names came from the Coalition for Better Schools, which asked the board to do so to remember the county’s Civil War history, and that the board in 2020 made the decision to change names hastily. In its request for the change back to the original names, it said “restoring these names would demonstrate a commitment to inclusivity, respect for history and responsiveness to community feedback.”
“We understand that the decision to rename these schools was made in response to
discussions surrounding Confederate symbols,” the Coalition for Public Schools wrote to the board last month. “However, we believe that revisiting this decision is essential to honor our community’s heritage and respect the wishes of the majority.”
In 2020, the board voted 5-1 to change Stonewall Jackson High School to Mountain View High School, and Ashby-Lee Elementary School to Honey Run Elementary School. At that time, it was noted in meeting minutes that the goal of the resolution was “condemning racism and affirming the division’s commitment to an inclusive school environment for all.”
Following the vote of the current board, the names will change back to their Confederate namesakes.
The motion to change the names back read as follows: “I move that the names of Stonewall Jackson High School and Ashby Lee Elementary School be restored to the schools now named Mountain View High School and Honey Run Elementary School respectively. The funds required to implement the restoration must be provided by private donations exclusively and not be borne by the school system or government tax funds, though the SCPS will oversee disbursements relating to restoration costs.”
The Virginia NAACP had previously condemned efforts to restore the Confederate names to the two schools in Shenandoah County.
In 2022, the Shenandoah County School Board did not restore the Confederate names of the schools following a 3-3 vote.
The Coalition for Better Schools sent a survey to thousands of Shenandoah County residents — most in the southern end of the county — with 1,160 people responding out of 8,507 surveys mailed. Of the responses, more than 90% wanted to go back to the Confederate names, while just 8.7% wanted to keep the names Mountain View High School and Honey Run Elementary School.
It said in the letter to the board that “the legacy of Stonewall Jackson, while complex, remains an important part of our local history,” and that “the community values the historical connections to both Turner Ashby and Robert E. Lee as prominent Virginians and local heroes.”
The Hampton NAACP issued a statement noting that, in 2017, it had campaigned successfully alongside other advocates for the renaming of the then-Stonewall Jackson High School and the then-Ashby-Lee Elementary School. It noted that the Hampton School Board also renamed two schools in 2018, and in 2021, renamed five Confederate-named schools.
“It is profoundly alarming and utterly unacceptable that the Shenandoah County School Board has now chosen to reinstate Confederate names after previously voting for their removal,” the Hampton NAACP said in a statement. “This decision is particularly abhorrent given the current social climate, marked by ongoing racial injustices exemplified by the murder of George Floyd four years ago, with the upcoming fourth commemoration of his death on May 25th. Such actions only perpetuate racism and bigotry, both in Virginia and across the nation. Is this a resurgence of Jim Crow-era policies in the 21st century?”