Santa Rosa school district to consider dropping James Monroe from elementary school

The national reckoning over racism that has toppled monuments and scrubbed names from public buildings is now fueling a campaign by a Santa Rosa school board trustee to rename James Monroe Elementary School in honor of Sonoma County civil rights leader George Ortiz.

Omar Medina, a member of the Santa Rosa City Schools Board of Education, will ask fellow trustees Wednesday to recognize Ortiz, a longtime advocate for Latino empowerment who died in January, by placing his name on the northwest Santa Rosa elementary school.

While the school is named after the fifth American president, the true origins of its name may actually be rooted deep in Sonoma County history.

Medina, however, has long been searching for a school to name after Ortiz, the son of migrant farmworkers who became a social worker and founded California Human Development, an anti-poverty agency that became one of the largest nonprofits in Sonoma County.

“I was kind of hoping to honor him while he was still living, to honor him for all that he has done in our community,” Medina said. “A lot of people thought this was the right person to name the school after. He has helped thousands of people over decades and decades of work.”

Medina zeroed in on Monroe Elementary for the proposed name change in part because of the demographics of the school. At 93%, Monroe has the highest Latino enrollment of any school in the district.

"Having the school named after a Latino is reflection of that community,“ he said.

But he also chose Monroe because of the recent wave that has removed monuments and memorials commemorating Confederate leaders, slaveholders and supporters of white supremacy. The push is part of a nationwide movement to address the legacy of systemic racism in the wake of the May 25 killing of George Floyd, a Black man killed by a white Minneapolis police officer.

Medina said he considered renaming several other local schools — including elementary schools named after Abraham Lincoln and Luther Burbank — but settled on Monroe because the Founding Father owned slaves and implemented the Monroe Doctrine, which declared North and South America closed to European colonization and set the foundation for future U.S. intervention in Latin America.

“I was looking at Lincoln, Monroe, possibly even Burbank,” Medina said, saying he landed on “Monroe just because of the slaveholding thing and I have issues with the Monroe doctrine in general.”

But there is some historical debate over whether the Marlow Road school is actually named for the former American president.

Historian Gaye LeBaron noted the uncertainty over the origin of the school’s name in a 1996 column for The Press Democrat. Former school board trustee Cynthia Zieber is credited with the push to append the names of three schools — Monroe, Lincoln and Fremont — by adding the first names James, Abraham and John C., respectively. In a column noting Zieber’s impending retirement, LeBaron wrote the 20-year school board trustee recognized that the addition of “James” to Monroe Elementary might have been historically incorrect.

“She worries a little about that James Monroe Elementary name since the school was annexed to the Santa Rosa district as the only school in what was known as the Monroe District, with no indication that President Monroe had anything to do with the name,” LeBaron wrote.

The Monroe District was annexed to Santa Rosa City Schools in 1950.

Medina is pushing a plan Wednesday to eliminate the district requirement for a citizens advisory committee when considering any school name changes. The committee should be optional, said Medina, who will also ask trustees to end the board’s prohibition on naming schools after living people.

If the seven-member school board approves the proposal, Medina will ask trustees to immediately rename James Monroe Elementary School in honor of Ortiz.

Medina acknowledged concerns that have emerged in recent days over the pace and timing of the dual proposals. He raised the idea of renaming the school for Ortiz in the closing minutes — past 10:30 p.m. — of the July 8 school board meeting. The issue was made public as an action item on the agenda on Friday.

“Is it too fast from the posting of the public agenda last Friday to the public hearing? Yeah, I guess it’s sooner rather than later,” he said, noting that much of the board’s business is proposed and agendized in the same way.

“That is why we have a public hearing,” he said. “That allows the community and the public to express that concern.”

Medina maintains that he has for months been in conversation with community leaders about honoring Ortiz and that his proposal has support. Current board rules call for a citizens committee created by the superintendent or her designee and to consist of a prescriptive list of members.

“My experience with those committees is they haven’t been reflective of the larger school community,” he said.

Medina did not initially intend for both the policy change and the name change to appear on the same agenda. He has for months sought debate on changing the district’s requirements for changing names of facilities. Discussion was agendized but postponed at the board’s Feb. 26 meeting for “time considerations” and postponed again on March 11 when Medina was absent.

Board president Laurie Fong, who agreed to make both proposals action items Wednesday, acknowledged that the timing and pace has raised questions among constituents.

“’Why this, why now?’ is the big question,” she said. “There are many reasons why this why now. There are many compelling arguments.”

Still, bypassing a chance to further involve students and community in the decision gives her pause, she said.

“I really value community input, stakeholder input and school input,“ she said.

At the close of the July 8 board meeting, the issue of names emerged again when trustee Alegria De La Cruz asked staff to gather information on potentially renaming Luther Burbank Elementary School after civil rights activist Dolores Huerta. Trustee Jenni Klose then raised the idea of returning the name of Frank Doyle.

Doyle Park Elementary School was closed in 2012 and the campus became the home of Santa Rosa French-American Charter School.

Superintendent Diann Kitamura urged the board to consider a uniform approach if names “are not in alignment with our mission and vision.”

“We need to talk about this because I think there are other things we need to look at rather than piecemealing all this. Let’s figure out how we get things done,” she said.

Medina’s dual proposals come on the same night the board is expected to approve both the return-to-school plan for nearly 16,000 students and the memorandums of understanding with both the teachers and classified staff unions for the upcoming school year.

In the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, Santa Rosa will offer families three options for instruction in the new school year. All students will start in online classes when school opens Aug. 17.

You can reach Staff Writer Kerry Benefield at 707-526-8671 or kerry.benefield@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @benefield.