News-Record.com

How about 'Government Indoctrination Camp # 95348627'?

"Reedy Fork Ranch developer Starmount donated the land for the school, and this should be taken into account."

I think that's precisely what happened. One of the school board members said something to the effect of not naming the school as the developer wanted.

Ten years or so ago the people of Guilford chose to give up local control of the schools in exchange for more equitable distribution of assets and the promise of fiscal responsibility through merging administrative tasks for the sake of efficiency and effectiveness. Although Ronald McNair has no direct connection to the Reedy Fork community, the name serves a symbolic purpose for the school system as a whole. How does this put the children first?

Jeez, folks. It's only a school name. Give it a rest.

As long as the kids get the education, who cares what the school's name is?

MD

MD,
You are spot on! I couldn't have said it better.

Given that it doesn't matter, why not sell naming rights to the highest bidder on a rotating basis? Transcripts and records could be encoded (Guildford County Elementary School #42) but the sign out front could be Pepsi-Cola Elementary School one year and Monsanto Company Elementary the next.

Truthfully, it doesn't really matter what the school is called - I just prefer Reedy Fork Elementary because I like the way it sounds...it's nice on the ears and gives me a mental image of kids playing and being kids and it helps people figure out where it is. However, it seems that many people who live in Reedy Fork area were caught off guard when it was changed on the same day as the 'meet and greet' with the new principal which many people attended and, therefore, were not at the board meeting to voice their opinions.

Now that I'm thinking about it, probably the best way to name the school would have been to have adults submit some names, and have the kids who are current students and who will be attending Reedy Fork, to submit some names, (with some adult guidance, perhaps...you wouldn't want a totally inappropriate name, and we all know how 4th graders can get sometimes!), and then, after all the names were submitted, let the KIDS who will be attending the school vote on the names. Kids only! It's the kids who will be going to the school, the kids should have input on what it will be called, especially since it's a brand new school. That way there would be some 'ownership' of the school, and the kids would feel as though they had some say (and they would have).

I don't understand, though, why one would not want to name a school in the manner that the people who donated land for the school wished. I don't understand that logic. You see wings of buildings and entire buildings all the time that have been named for a person or family that made large donations to the institution. There must be something else going on here that I am not privy to. You'd think donating land like that would be appreciated and people would want to thank the donors. Can somebody please shed some light on why it's different in this case for me? Thanks!

Zhak, are you saying that 10 years ago the school district wasn't one big county run district? Interesting. I've only been in NC for 10 years and Greensboro for only 9 years. Were all the schools run separately before that...were they their own districts? That's the way it was where I grew up - all the schools were neighborhood schools and you went to the one you lived closest to. Each town/village/city in the area ran their own school. My husband and I lived only 10 minutes from each other, but we attended different school districts because we didn't live in the same town, technically. Same county, not the same town.

Oh well. Anyway, the school be called what it will be called. I hope it's Reedy Fork, but, but if it's not I can deal with it. In a few years it's not going to matter, anyway...nobody will even remember this little name controversy.

Poppin--

I can't remember exactly when but it is within the last ten to fifteen years that the districts merged to become this monolithic machine. Where I grew up was the same as your experience - neighborhood schools run on the very local level. Some were small, some were bigger. When we needed to implement a program that was kind of pricey we would band together with another school district. If we had a question about policy, we'd drop by the nearest school board member's house after dinner and ask for clarification. Any student with an issue could knock on the superintendent's door and talk to him. It's still set up that way; my nephew just graduated from the same high school his mom and I went to and he was well prepared for college.

Thanks. That sounds like where I grew up...small town, everyone knew everyone else. I have a memory of some of my classmates skipping class one day. The principal actually went to the house of one of the kids, found all of them there, and told them to get in the car. They did, he brought them to school. Gotta love small towns!

I went to the GCS web site to do a litle fact finding behind the recommendation for the name. They had an area of attached articles to read, mostly emails between 4 or 5 people with all this junk attached to it. I wonder is this how a school gets it's name? A few email's that didn't really say much other than some news paper clipped article? I guess those fools couldn't come up with anything else.

Maybe we should name a section of road in Reedy Fork, Martin Luther King Blvd. or Malcom X Drive and then there would be some association there . . . right now I don't get it

"Proposed, future" schools should be given a number. After they are built, they can be given a name. Reedy Fork Elementary School was on the original plan over four years ago. It doesn't make sense to change it now.