BY EMILY MIBACH
Daily Post Staff Writer
The Ravenswood School Board has voted to rename the district’s middle school after the late labor leader Cesar Chavez.
The board voted 3-1 on Thursday (Oct. 10), with trustee Stephanie Fitch dissenting and board president Tamara Sobomehin absent, to change Ravenswood Middle School to Cesar Chavez Ravenswood Middle School.
The name of the late labor leader and Latino rights activist was nearly dropped from the district when it consolidated its middle schools onto the campus of Cesar Chavez Academy at 2450 Ralmar Ave.
After the consolidation, the Chavez name only applied to the K-5 portion of the school, which was eliminated at the end of the school year in June. From that point onward, the campus was going to be called Ravenswood Middle School.
But the school district didn’t alert the community to the fact that it was dropping the Chavez name.
City Councilman Ruben Abrica started raising questions about what would happen to the Chavez name in June, when he saw a sign go up on the campus saying “Ravenswood Middle School” next to the one for Chavez Academy.
After Abrica raised the issue, the board discussed whether to retain the name, with most of the board saying they wanted to keep Chavez’s name within the district, but create a committee to rename the school.
At the board’s Thursday meeting, the committee discussed the topic, which resulted in the vote.
This is not the first time the district has decided to meld school names together. This happened when the school bearing the name of late African American astronaut Ronald McNair was combined with Los Robles School at 2033 Pulgas Ave.
The board ended up calling the combined school the Robles McNair Academy.
Our school board almost got away with eliminating Chavez’s name from the district. They got caught and reluctantly did the right thing. But it wasn’t unanimous. They were holding their noses for some reason.