Minneapolis highschool ditching Patrick Henry as namesake

After years of consideration, Patrick Henry Excessive College in Minneapolis will probably be altering its identify in yet one more transfer to erase a outstanding determine in U.S. historical past from an establishment.

The Minneapolis faculty board made a unanimous determination on Tuesday to order the beginning of the name-change course of as a result of the highschool's namesake, Henry, who was one of many nation's Founding Fathers, owned slaves, in keeping with Star Tribune.

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"College students, employees, and neighborhood members acknowledge the necessity for a college identify that higher represents the values of the neighborhood," the decision says. "Ending the controversy about whether or not or not the identify must be modified will permit the Patrick Henry College Group to concentrate on creating a suggestion for the brand new identify."

Opponents of the identify change have argued that renaming the varsity could be tantamount to rewriting historical past and would price the varsity a substantial amount of cash, mentioned the report, which famous that the board's price range for 2022-23 does embody a fund to assist offset the prices of the brand new indicators and branding for board-directed identify modifications.

Two different faculties within the space have already modified their names for comparable causes. This has turn out to be a nationwide pattern that has made nationwide headlines in recent times.

Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R-VA) slammed the concept of renaming faculties after the Virginia Division of Training proposed eradicating references to George Washington because the “father of our nation” in state faculties.

"I consider we must always inform our historical past precisely, the great and the dangerous," Youngkin, who was elected as governor final yr after focusing a lot of his marketing campaign on training, informed Fox News. "And a part of the historical past we'll inform is that our Founding Fathers, together with George Washington and James Madison, and let’s not overlook about Thomas Jefferson and Patrick Henry and the others, performed a unprecedented function within the founding of our nation.”

The division later clarified that the proposed modifications had been an “inadvertent error."