Virginia District Opposes Removing Jefferson's Name from School, School Board Does It Anyway
A Virginia school board has ignored a public poll and unilaterally decided to change the names of two schools in the district, one of which was named to honor Thomas Jefferson.
Even worse, the rationale for one liberal board member was that by removing Jefferson’s name from the school, the move would actually honor Jefferson — or something to that effect. The mental gymnastics of it all are quite astounding.
The Falls Church City School Board voted 7-0 Tuesday to change the names of two schools that are currently named for a pair of famed Virginians, Jefferson and George Mason, WTOP-FM reported.
The decision was made after a community survey conducted by the school board — which polled 3,488 students, school staff members, parents and other members of the community — showed a majority of respondents were against removing the names of the country’s Founding Fathers from the schools.
Fifty-six percent of those polled in Falls Church, which is just minutes west of Washington, D.C., did not want Thomas Jefferson Elementary School to be renamed. An identical 56 percent also did not think George Mason High School needed a name change.
But during a Tuesday meeting, board member Phil Reitinger attacked President Donald Trump and expressed dismay that the president received so many votes in the election last month. He then attempted to justify the board’s decision to rename schools in the district currently named after both Jefferson and Mason, a co-author of the Bill of Rights.
Video shared online by conservative commentator Matt Walsh shows Reitinge grumbling about Trump and Jefferson during a board Zoom call.
Insane. Falls Church school board voted to take Thomas Jefferson’s name off of their school. A board member explains that that they have to make the move because of Trump, and because the best way to “live up to” Jefferson’s words is to “no longer have a school named after him”: pic.twitter.com/4oFAfP5I5f
— Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) December 9, 2020
Citing his own liberal political views, Reitinger said he was “proud” that Democrat Joe Biden, who has been declared the winner of the presidential election by many establishment media outlets, received 81 percent of the Falls Church vote, before going into a prolonged rant about overriding the will of those same people, a majority of whom want the school names to remain unchanged.
Reitinger repeated the media’s “very fine people” hoax that that President Donald Trump called white supremacists good people, which has of course been debunked numerous times. He then attacked the legacies of Virginians whose contributions to the state, and the country, were much more significant than his own.
“I feel the need, both personally and in my capacity as a member of the Falls Church City School Board, to help change our course and do more for diversity and inclusion. We need to fight inequality and racism with action. We need, as we are, to reform curriculum, and work to educate students to understand the meaning of history not just through the experience of the privileged but the underprivileged as well,” the board member said.
“We need to pursue, as we are, a diversity, equity and inclusion policy for our schools that unites us and specifies further action. And last, we need to speak out. Although actions matter more than words, words matter. By having schools named for George Mason and Thomas Jefferson we are making a statement, and I think we should make a different statement.”
Reitinger then went for blood when talking about Jefferson.
“We should instead make a statement that we believe all people are created equal. Thomas Jefferson wrote almost those very words, and we can better live up to the goal he set by no longer having a school named for him,” the leftist school board member said.
Reitinger later released a statement explaining that changing the names of the schools, despite public opinion being against the changes, “is the right thing to do.”
Last evening the @FCCPS School Board unanimously voted to change the names of George Mason High School and Thomas Jefferson Middle School. Here is my statement https://t.co/7KafY7qME9 and here is the story: https://t.co/SSjFhOMN7N
— Phil Reitinger, Principle Engineer (@CarpeDiemCyber) December 9, 2020
As with most other actions taken by leftists in positions of power, the unanimous vote elicits some head-scratching questions.
Why would the board have bothered to even canvass the community if its members were going to apparently change the school names no matter what?
Was it all a big virtue signal? Probably.
Additionally, what is the fixation with scrubbing Jefferson, Mason, George Washington and others from public buildings and other areas?
Sure, many of the country’s founders owned slaves. They were products of the times in which they were born into this imperfect world. But those men also constructed a system which was and is so brilliant, equitable and fair that it has remained relevant through the winds of change.
Using the system created and adopted by men such as Jefferson and Mason, the country long ago purged itself of institutional slavery following a bloody Civil War.
The same system also allowed for the success of more movements for equality and civil rights, which had the backing of the country’s founding documents — documents authored by men like Jefferson and Mason.
Reitinger and his fellow school board members would prefer to erase those legacies in favor of the left’s brand of authoritarian political correctness. In Falls Church, the indoctrination of children by leftists can now be conducted in schools that have no connection, at least in name, to some of Virginia’s most significant historical figures.
That is a terrible travesty. Two sons of Virginia helped to create a system of self-government that changed the entire world for the better, and now their names are a taboo subject in a community located just a few miles from the Jefferson Memorial in Washington.
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