School board looks to community for renaming of Belleville school

By David Tuan Bui and Leila Nasr

BELLEVILLE – The Hastings-Prince Edward District School Board has reopened the naming process for Moira Secondary School to the public.

At a Monday night meeting, the board said it wants a name that can represent welcoming and inclusion for all students.

“As a learning organization, we see this as an opportunity to make certain that we are walking the walk and talking the talk with regards to equity and welcoming students into our building,” said director of education Mandy Savery-Whiteway.

The reopening of the naming process is taking place after the proposed name of “Meyers Creek” ran into controversy over John Meyers’ history of owning slaves. Meyers was an early settler of the area.

Recommendations for a new name will be given to the board at their next meeting.

“We will launch a process immediately to rename. It will involve public consultation and I anticipate bringing a recommendation to board on June 18th,” said Savery-Whiteway.

The board will reconvene on June 18th to hear the recommended names for Moira Secondary School. Photo by David Tuan Bui, QNet News

The renaming process will be exactly the same as before. The board will reach out to the community for suggestions.

“We will follow a similar process to what we did last time so it will be posted on our website, we will use Twitter, we will get it out to schools and have it on school websites and make it available to anyone who would like to contribute and we would anticipate that we would try to get that going probably late this week,” Savery-Whiteway said.

Submissions from the community can be submitted in many ways.

“We will receive it via e-mail, we will receive it right through our website, people can call us, we often get letters too so whatever way they are able to communicate, we are happy to receive that information,” she said.

Moira Secondary School keeping its name is still possible according to school board trustee Tom Binaris.

“Just the name change thing, I read a lot of e-mails about keeping Moira the same name and there’s a lot of public input into this,” said Binaris.

“As trustees, sometimes we have to make tough decisions and I’m one that will look at all aspects. I didn’t take this very lightly.”

The board has had experience with renaming schools. Schools such as Athol-South Marysburgh Public School, York River Public School, Tweed Elementary School and Marmora Public School are results of the same renaming process.

Information on submitting a suggestion for Moira can be found here. Online suggestions can be submitted though the school board’s page found here.

Online deadline submissions close on Wednesday, June 6, 2018 at 4:30 p.m. EST.