Silly
– and disappointing. After 10 months of meetings, it’s certainly
begs questions about time and energy when the Gilroy Unified School
District Board of Trustees selects
”
Las Animas
”
as the name of the school to replace Las Animas School.
Silly – and disappointing. After 10 months of meetings, it’s certainly begs questions about time and energy when the Gilroy Unified School District Board of Trustees selects “Las Animas” as the name of the school to replace Las Animas School.
Yep, that’s right … drumroll please, “And now, the new name for Las Animas School … Las Animas.”
Charging a committee with recommending a name clearly isn’t a good idea. There certainly wasn’t a lack of community input. Plenty of passion went into the suggestions – 44 names were offered, many with worthy credentials and high character.
The problem resulted from weak leadership, and that is not likely lost on trustees who were given four choices: Pleasant Valley – the former name of our city, Las Animas – current name, TJ Owens – recently deceased educator and former GUSD trustee, and Dale Connell, a longtime generous community member and benefactor of music programs in the district.
Surprisingly, none of the historical names made the cut.
Given that, couldn’t we have saved ourselves all that hassle?
Instead of going through this frustrating process when Gilroy opens another new school, here are a few modest tongue-in-cheek proposals to consider:
– Sell the naming rights of new schools to the highest bidder. We live in a society saturated by advertisement and product placement. A woman is selling advertising space on her pregnant belly on eBay, for goodness’ sake. If selling naming rights is good enough for sports arenas, surely it’s good enough for GUSD.
– Adopt the New York style naming scheme – number the schools. There’s no angst. Just call it PS 4 for public school number four.
– Allow students to choose the name, although you run the risk that they’ll honor their cartoon heroes by naming the school something like Springfield Elementary, where Bart and Lisa Simpson attend school.
Any of these suggestions ought to be less problematic than the method the district used to christen Las Animas Elementary School with the same name at its new location.
The point is, trustees should take on the task themselves next time. That’s why we elected them.
