San Francisco Unified may rename 44 schools, including Washington (slave owner), Lincoln (suppressed Native American uprising) and Edison (euthanized animals).

A committee also recommended changing the name of Dianne Feinstein Elementary because, as Mayor in 1986, she replaced a vandalized Confederate flag that was flying at City Hall.

In a blistering statement, Mayor London Breed told the school district to stop “focusing energy and resources on renaming” closed schools and “get our kids back in school.”

Coronavirus cases are low in San Francisco. Private schools are offering in-person classes, the mayor pointed out.

Public-school parents “are juggling their children’s daily at-home learning schedules with doing their own jobs and maintaining their sanity,” while children are “staring at screens day after day instead of learning and growing with their classmates and friends,” Breed wrote.

. . . the fact that our kids aren’t in school is what’s driving inequity in our City. Not the name of a school. We are in a pandemic right now that is forcing us all to prioritize what truly matters. Conversations around school names can be had once the critical work of educating our young people in person is underway.

In the San Francisco Chronicle, a parent named Jonathan Alloy observed, “We’re not actually helping disadvantaged children by changing the name of the school they can’t attend.”

The renaming proposal is targeting “anyone directly involved in the colonization of people, those connected to any human rights or environmental abuses, slave owners or participants in enslavement, and known racists and/or white supremacists and/or espoused racist beliefs.”