The Loudoun County School Board voted this week to rename two public schools, LCPS announced in a news release. Mercer Middle School will become Gum Spring Middle School, and Frances Hazel Reid Elementary School will become Mildred and Richard Loving Elementary School.
“When communities name schools, they are communicating to the public, very much including children, which values they hold dear. Naming schools, like naming other public spaces, such as streets, buildings, and parks, is an opportunity for communities to declare what or who should be honored,” said Latisha Ellis-Williams, LCPS’s assistant superintendent for diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility.
School Renaming Process
This renaming process began in 2020, when LCPS began a review of all facility names and mascots. It sought to identify any connections to the Confederacy, slavery, or racial segregation. The school board contracted History Matters to identified school names that warranted review.
Mercer Middle School has ties to Charles Fenton Mercer, a lawyer and politician who died in 1858. Mercer was a slaveholder and did not believe in abolishing slavery. The new name, Gum Spring, refers to nearby Gum Spring Road and a 19th-century village in Loudoun County, now called Arcola.
Frances Hazel Reid Elementary School’s namesake was a historian and longtime employee of the Loudoun Times. Reid was a charter member of the United Daughters of the Confederacy. The new name refers to Mildred and Richard Loving, the winning petitioners in the Supreme Court case Loving v. Virginia, in which the Supreme Court struck down Virginia’s law against interracial marriage.
LCPS will now begin the process of formally changing the names by July 1. This includes signage and office supplies. The board estimates a renaming cost of $214,000 for Mercer and $71,000 for Frances Hazel Reid.
Feature image, stock.adobe.com
