Beginning in 2020, the Loudoun County School Board (LCSB) quietly funded research into all 98 district schools to determine if they were named after individuals who lived in the 17th, 18th, or 19th centuries. This was an era in which slavery was considered an acceptable part of life in Virginia. After four years of research at a cost of over $305,000, about 10% of the school names were identified as problematic.
One middle school was named in honor of Charles Fenton Mercer. A brief review of Wikipedia, a free, online resource, reveals that Mercer was an abolitionist. Although it is “unclear” if he owned slaves in 1820, by 1830, U.S. Federal census records confirm he did not own slaves. Calling slavery the “blackest of all blots,” Mercer traveled to Europe and Russia to advocate for the abolition of international slave trade.
Frances Hazel Reid Elementary School also landed on the list of problematic school names. A free, online summary of Frances Hazel Reid’s life created by Loudoun County Public Schools’ “One to the World” program, reveals that Reid was a pioneering female historian and journalist. College educated in an era in which women still had no right to vote, she accomplished a 73-year career at the Loudoun Times Mirror newspaper. Reid also founded a local Business and Professional Women’s Club “to discuss the issues of working women such as equal pay.” LCPS’s research uncovered that Reid was a member of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, an organization whose members are by default considered racist regardless of the organization’s denunciation of white supremacy.
In 2021, the LCSB paid over $1 million to rename the Loudoun County High School mascot from “Raiders” to “Captains.” The term “Raiders” was deemed unacceptable as it referred to a Confederate unit commanded by Col. John Mosby during the Civil War. In fact, Mosby was conflicted about his service to the Confederacy given his disapproval of slavery. Following the Civil War, Mosby befriended Ulysses S. Grant, commanding general of the Union troops, and joined the Republican Party which had been established for the purpose of fighting against slavery. This resulted in Mosby being reviled by some Southerners as a turncoat; he received death threats, survived an assassination attempt, and had his boyhood home burned down. In spite of Mosby’s commitment to abolitionism, the LCSB found it necessary to change the mascot of Loudoun County High School, an all-black school that had been desegregated 55 years ago. According to U.S. News reports, fifty-one percent of LCHS students are enrolled in Advanced Placement classes, the average SAT score is a respectable 1240, and proficiency levels are 75% for math, 88% for reading, and 75% for science. Ninety-four percent of LCHS students graduate. It does not appear that the name of the school mascot was hindering exceptional student achievement.
Why was it necessary for Loudoun County Public Schools (LCPS) to spend over $305,000 of taxpayer dollars to conduct four years of research on these individuals when free information was publicly available? This research ignored their many accomplishments and judged them only by the “enlightened” standards of the 21st century. Most ironic is that the school names could easily have been studied by students at the schools as was done at Frances Hazel Reid Elementary School. Upon completion of their research, students could have presented their findings, both the good and the bad, to the school body to begin a student dialogue. Instead, LCPS hired researchers ranging in pay from $78/hour to $204/hour to perform the work. Records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act show that lower hourly-rate personnel were never employed for the project, and nearly 3/4ths of the research was done by those at the highest pay rate.
Although changing the name of just the mascot of Loudoun County High School cost taxpayers over $1 million, “estimates” to change names of entire schools, including athletic uniforms, are inexplicably significantly lower.
It will cost an estimated $140,000 to rename Mercer Middle School which honored an avowed abolitionist who may or may not have owned slaves. By some, this might be considered a low priority given that the 20-year-old building faces a 2026 replacement of its heating and cooling units quoted at nearly $1.5 million.
Frances Hazel Reid Elementary School, named after a woman whose ground-breaking career, a model for young girls, is cast aside due to her membership in a group that honors Confederate soldiers, will cost $135,000 to rename. Built in 2003, it requires $750,000 for new heating and cooling units by 2026 and a new $3.4 million roof by 2028.
Surely these capital costs, which assure comfortable and healthy conditions in our schools, are a higher priority than school renaming. But tradeoffs to save money are unimportant when simply raising taxes is the go-to option.Finally, one must also ask, why was the research limited to revealing ties only to racism? Why not investigate sexism? Perhaps some of the men after whom schools were named were abusers, rapists, or “Me Too” offenders? What about those legislators who voted against giving women the right to vote, or banks who refused to grant women credit cards and mortgages, or judges who awarded custody to fathers since the stay-at-home mother had no income history, or employers who refused to hire women who just might get pregnant? Should LCSB fund an investigation into every school named after a man to root out sexists? The answer is “No.” We will not investigate school names based on these criteria because we live in a merciful nation that recognizes, forgives, and moves on from its past. We teach our children that many, many events of the past were wrong, while also emphasizing the need for understanding those who lived in a different era. But instead, our school board uses our tax dollars, in a time when families are struggling to get by, to pay overpriced researchers to dig up details of which few were aware, while ignoring mitigating facts, and higher priority safety and academic concerns, for the sole purpose of fomenting animosity between races.
