Orange County Finalizes Process for Renaming Hillsborough Schools
Orange County Schools has finalized the process for renaming Cameron Park Elementary and C.W. Stanford Middle schools in Hillsborough.
The schools’ respective principals will lead the community process for the name changes with district staff, residents, parents and students serving on separate renaming committees. The district said it hopes to have the schools renamed in time for the next school year, with the vote for the final name and renaming ceremony happening in the summer.
The school board voted in February to change the names of Cameron Park Elementary and C.W. Stanford Middle, which comes as the district strives to improve how it addresses racial inequities, intolerance and academic disparities. A 14-step strategy was outlined in a recent school board policy among the steps being an initiative to “review the names of buildings in our district to examine their origin and compliance.”
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Editor’s Note: A previous version of this article incorrectly referred to Cameron Park Elementary School as a middle school.
C.W. Stanford Middle School in the Orange County Schools district will see its name changed in the coming months.
The system’s Board of Education on Monday moved ahead with plans to shift the school from honoring Charles Whitson Stanford Sr., a long-time school board chairman for the district who served from 1941 to 1967. The school district dedicated the middle school in his honor in 1970 shortly before Stanford’s death.
The decision for change, which comes two weeks after the district unanimously approved to change the name of a middle school that honored a slaveholder, came with a 5-2 vote. School board members Will Atherton and Bonnie Hauser were the dissenting votes.
“We are responsible for school and community climate," board member Jennifer Moore said. "We are having to address issues of inequity because our predecessors did not.”