What’s in a name? Often, it’s contention

By Emily Richmond

Tuesday, Sept. 16, 2008 | 2 a.m.

Clark County school officials are considering rewriting their policy for naming schools amid concerns the process has devolved into a popularity contest.

In recent years, meetings of the school names committee have taken on the frenzied air of a political caucus or a pep rally, with supporters waving banners or photographs of their nominee.

“Of all the volunteer engagements I’ve had, nothing has been like this one,” Punam Mathur, MGM Mirage senior vice president and a member of the names committee, said last week of the lobbying’s intensity. “I was handed an enormous stack of papers for four schools. There were 100 applicants.”

Critics cite the short wait for some nominees in comparison with years-long delays for others.

In 2006, the School Board approved naming elementary schools after Carolyn Reedom, a year after the respected assistant region superintendent retired, and the Rev. Jesse Scott, a Las Vegas civil rights leader whose name had been on the list for a decade.

The new naming process would create a system for rating nominations based on specific criteria and require that applications and supporting documentation be placed online.

It would “bring greater credibility to the process,” Mathur said at last week’s School Board meeting to review the policy.

The new rules would also allow schools to recognize the contributions of groups, not just individuals, addressing concerns of veterans who have felt slighted that their sacrifices have not been recognized. The naming of Cimarron-Memorial High School was intended to acknowledge veterans, but did not satisfy local groups.

Elementary and middle schools are currently named after individuals who have made contributions to education, as well as community leaders and “pioneers.” High schools are named after geographic features. (An exception was made in 2001 when students requested that a new high school be named “Liberty” to memorialize the losses in the 9/11 terrorist attacks.)

The proposed changes state high school names could include “groups of persons” who have “demonstrated public service.”

The revised rules would not require the School Board to name a school honoring veterans and it remains to be seen whether they will anytime soon.

Under the revised policy, elementary schools would be named after local educators. Middle schools would be namesakes of “positive role models” and community leaders who demonstrated excellence in fields other than education.

School Board member Carolyn Edwards expressed concern about narrowing the criteria for elementary campuses. “I’m thinking of Richard Rundle, who deserved to have a school named after him for how he died, and what he did,” said Edwards, referring to the Las Vegas boy killed in 1987 after he pushed his best friend from the path of a speeding drunken driver. “This would preclude our ability to do that.”

Under the new policy, a middle school could still be named for Rundle, said Joyce Haldeman, associate superintendent of community and government relations.

The school names committee, which reviews applications and submits recommendations to the School Board for consideration, is made up of three School Board members and three appointed community members, who all serve three-year terms.

Under the new policy, the committee would consist of two School Board members and five community members who would serve two-year terms.

The School Board would continue to make the final decision on school names.

The School Board is scheduled to vote on the proposed policy change at its Oct. 2 meeting.

The school names policy has been modified in recent years.

In 2004, the School Board voted to add “loss of life in the performance of service to benefit or support the Clark County School District” as a factor for consideration in naming a school. The change came after an unsuccessful campaign by family and friends to have a school named for Isaac Perez, a 21-year-old custodian who was killed after being kidnapped at gunpoint from the elementary school where he worked.

Members of the naming committee said although they sympathized with the family’s efforts, Perez did not meet the criteria for having a school named after him.

Also in 2004, the School Board added a provision on revoking school names after a high-profile assemblyman for whom an elementary school is named was fired from his job with Las Vegas in the wake of a timecard controversy. Although his name was never mentioned during the School Board’s public meetings on the policy change, district insiders dubbed it the “Wendell Williams clause.”

The revocation process — reserved for “extraordinary circumstances” in which an honoree is convicted of a felony or a crime involving “moral turpitude” — has yet to be used.

The elementary campus at 1030 J St. still bears Williams’ name.