Committee keeps secret the list, which has been reduced from 37
to 13, until the process is complete
Gilroy – The committee undertaking the arduous task of renaming a Gilroy elementary school has whittled down the lengthy number of proposals but refuses to reveal the contents of the slimmed-down list.
“We talked about it collectively and we decided to not release the (list),” said Rob Mendiola, Gilroy Unified School District facilities director and a member of the Las Animas Renaming Committee. “So, I think we’re better off not to list the names at this point. We’re making progress and that’s as much as we should say.”
Committee Chair Bryan Walker – who also happens to be the GUSD board student representative – reported just this week that the committee had pared down a list of about 40 names to 13. The committee collected suggestions for the new elementary school – which will serve as a replacement for the Wren Avenue-based Las Animas – during two public meetings and then went to work weeding out undesirables.
Mendiola and other committee members said the group decided as a whole not to release the specific names they had narrowed it down to, until the process is complete.
The district employee denied that anything secretive is going on, emphasizing that the list is not some sort of mystery. And even though they have closed the suggestion box, Mendiola said the committee list is not concrete and they don’t want to release it to the public.
“This is the work in progress and it should be considered as such,” he said. “We feel that we’re better off to (not) name the names.”
Ardy Ghoreishi, a committee member and GUSD board candidate, said he personally wouldn’t mind releasing the list but he would have to get the go-ahead from the other six members. And the group did decide to keep the decision behind closed doors for the time being.
Still, some proposals have made their way into the community. Reginald B. Desidero, a soldier who earned the posthumous Congressional Medal of Honor after being killed in battle in Korea in 1950, is one popular suggestion.
The Medal of Honor is the highest reward bestowed on military personnel. Desidero graduated from Gilroy High School where he played football and basketball.
Some locals are advocating for Charles Gubser, a GHS graduate, who returned to his alma mater as a teacher and later entered politics.
Greenfield was also suggested to reflect the new location of the school at the end of Luchessa Avenue. Former school board president TJ Owens, who died last year, was also mentioned as a possibility.
And Tom Dunham had a unique take: just don’t change the name. The district decided to make the name change since Las Animas Elementary School, situated on Wren Avenue, will be replaced by a new school on the southwest side of town, which is set to open in the fall of 2007.
But Dunham pointed out that the excuse for renaming the school – that’s it’s removed from the Spanish land grant dubbed Rancho Las Animas, is not true. Actually, the new school would still lie within the boundaries of the land grant.
“That being the case, no name change is necessary and the traditions surrounding the current name can remain intact,” Dunham wrote in an e-mail to Superintendent Edwin Diaz.
Trustee Jim Rogers said he was surprised to learn that the new facility will still be within the Las Animas border. And since he’s a fan of naming sites after relevant location he likes the idea of maintaining the current name.
“I wouldn’t be against transferring the name of Las Animas but I’m waiting to see what the committee recommends,” he said.
The seven-member committee tackling the renaming is comprised of Mendiola, Sylvia Reyes, Las Animas principal, Gilroy High School students Bryan Walker and Lyndsay Kwong and community members Art Barron, Ghoreishi and Eleanor Frusetta.
Board policy requires that the name reflects one of the following: an individual who has made major contributions to local schools or the city; state, national or worldwide significance; the geographic area where the facility is located, historic significance or a former school that was demolished.
Naming Gilroy’s second high school was a simpler task since the district decided to dub it Christopher High School, after the local garlic magnate who donated a sizable chunk of land to GUSD.
The committee doesn’t have a deadline and through this process they have quickly learned that a hastily made decision would not benefit the district.
“There’s no rush,” Ghoreishi said. “The school is not even built yet so we have a good year or so. It’s not like a child that was born and you have to name it in the hospital.”
The naming committee concept has been around for quite some time. Rogers, a retired educator, said he remembers back in the late 1970s when what’s now South Valley Middle School was nameless.
Locals worried about using names that could easily be turned into derogatory nicknames for the school, which was moved into the former Gilroy High School site.
“They agonized over this thing and finally they came up with South Valley,” Rogers said.
And just to prove that no decision comes without controversy, right about the same time a garbage company set up shop in Gilroy, Rogers said. Their name?
South Valley Disposal.
