[Dryerase] The Alarm!--School Board scraps Chavez name

[Alarm!Wires]

PV School Board scraps Chavez name

Despite broad local dissent, District Board votes to name school Pajaro 
Valley High

By Rachel Showstack
The Alarm! Newspaper Contributor

The name of Cesar E. Chavez, the legendary labor and civil rights leader 
who defended the rights of Watsonville farm workers in the 1980s, would 
not unify Watsonville students, according to the Pajaro Valley Unified 
School District Board of Trustees.

After a five month campaign by students, community organizations and 
local educators to name the district’s new high school Cesar E. Chavez 
High, the Board voted (6-1) last Wednesday, August 14, to name the 
school Pajaro Valley High instead.

“Students can’t complain about the place they live,” said Trustee Dan 
Hankemeier, who voted for the name Pajaro Valley High School. “Pajaro 
Valley is the most unifying name.”

But according to José Sánchez, campaign director of the Coalition for 
Cesar E. Chavez High School, naming the school after Chavez would be an 
inspiration for Watsonville students. “[Chavez] represented, freedom and 
justice for all people,” Sánchez said. “He will be a role model for 
students in Watsonville.”

Sánchez argued that the name Pajaro Valley High School does not 
represent the community because it was not the choice that received 
overwhelming community support. “The District Board’s decision was very 
undemocratic,” he said. “They didn’t listen to the students.”

While seven or eight people spoke at last Wednesday’s meeting in favor 
of the name Pajaro Valley, about fifty-seven spoke in favor of Cesar E. 
Chavez.

Hankemeier argued that the students who attended the meetings did not 
represent the district’s students. “The same students attended all the 
meetings about the new name,” he said. “There were no new faces.”

But according to Sánchez, about 500 students also signed a petition in 
support of the name Cesar E. Chavez, while student support of Pajaro 
Valley was minimal. In addition to student signatures, the coalition 
collected almost 3,500 signatures from other community members.

According to Sánchez, it may still be possible to change the new 
school’s name to Cesar E. Chavez. But the only way to get the school 
district to make decisions that represent Watsonville’s students is to 
elect new board members, he said. While Watsonville is about 
seventy-five percent Latino, there is only one Latino trustee on the 
seven-member board.

“We are looking for people who support the community as a whole and are 
more representative of the community,” said Sánchez. “When you have a 
board that is not representative of the people, it doesn’t make 
decisions that are beneficial to the community.”

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