After years of consideration, Patrick Henry High School in Minneapolis will be changing its name in yet another move to erase a prominent figure in U.S. history from an institution.
The Minneapolis school board made a unanimous decision on Tuesday to order the start of the name-change process because the high school’s namesake, Henry, who was one of the nation’s Founding Fathers, owned slaves, according to Star Tribune.
YOUNGKIN CRITICIZES PROPOSED REMOVAL OF WASHINGTON IN VIRGINIA SCHOOLS
“Students, staff, and community members recognize the need for a school name that better represents the values of the community,” the resolution says. “Ending the debate about whether or not the name should be changed will allow the Patrick Henry School Community to focus on developing a recommendation for the new name.”
Opponents of the name change have argued that renaming the school would be tantamount to rewriting history and would cost the school a great deal of money, said the report, which noted that the board’s budget for 2022-23 does include a fund to help offset the costs of the new signs and branding for board-directed name changes.
Two other schools in the area have already changed their names for similar reasons. This has become a nationwide trend that has made national headlines in recent years.
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Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R-VA) slammed the idea of renaming schools after the Virginia Department of Education proposed removing references to George Washington as the “father of our country” in state schools.
“I believe we should tell our history accurately, the good and the bad,” Youngkin, who was elected as governor last year after focusing much of his campaign on education, told Fox News. “And part of the history we’re going to tell is that our Founding Fathers, including George Washington and James Madison, and let’s not forget about Thomas Jefferson and Patrick Henry and the others, played an extraordinary role in the founding of our nation.”
The department later clarified that the proposed changes were an “inadvertent error.”
