WINDS OF CHANGE

Parents Push to Change Name of California’s Dixie School District

They say it evokes racism. Opponents say the name has nothing to do with slavery.

Parents who live in California’s Dixie School District are delivering petitions Tuesday calling for a vote on a name change, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. The issue has divided the city of San Rafael, where some residents say the name has racist overtones and others say it pre-dates the Confederacy and has nothing to do with slavery. The petitions being delivered on Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday say a vote by the Board of Trustees must be held within 40 days. Rep. Jared Huffman (D-CA) is among those who say the name should be changed. “We cannot separate this issue from the broader context of our country’s struggles with racism,” he said last month. Paul Brunell, one of the name-change opponents told the Marin Independent Journal that those pushing the issue are “stoking fears that if we don’t change, somehow we’ll be inviting the KKK here.”