BROOKLINE, MA -- Coolidge Corner School, once known as the Devotion School, is coming closer to finding its new name. The Select Board held a public hearing on the matter last night.
Coolidge Corner and Brookline High School students reviewed the nominations submitted by the community and narrowed it down to three finalists: Floria Ruffin Ridley, Ethel Weiss, and Robert I. Sperber.
Members of the community, district staff, and Coolidge Corner School students researched all the possible names as a team. The School Committee has recommended moving forward with Florida Ruffin Ridley as the new school name. Should Town Meeting members approve this motion in November, the Florida Ruffin Ridley school will be established as the new, permanent name for the school building.
Liv Klawiter, a fifth-grader at CCS, on the renaming committee, Believers of Change said she joined the committee because wanted to be able to have an impact on her school’s name and future. Klawiter said African-American civil rights activist and suffragist Ridley stood out the most because the committee wanted a name that said the opposite of the former Devotion School.
Edward Devotion was a slaveholder who left money to build a town school when he died in 1744, the school was built over a century later in 1892, named after him and his legacy. Klawiter said it comes down to how students look up to the name and how it impacts the community.
“I just want you to think of how you would feel if you put so much time and work into picking the school name just to have it be picked another name and your time gone to waste,” Klawiter said. “I just wanted to remind you one more time of the work, the passion, the heart we put into our school name, which we want to name it after Florida Ridley.”
Larry Ruttman, author of “Voices of Brookline,” is a proponent of the article for Ethel Weiss and is the founder and president of the group “Devotion to Ethel.” According to Ruttman, Weiss nurtured Devotion School students, including himself, up until her dying day.
“There is nobody else like Ethel Weiss, nobody else who had such an impact on this community,” Ruttman said. “She wasn’t an ordinary person, she was an extraordinary person and she used her power oh-so beautifully.”
Lee Selwyn, a Precinct 13 Advisory Committee member, said he wants to rename the former Devotion School after Robert I. Sperber, a previous superintendent of Brookline Public Schools. Selwyn said he believes Sperber best exemplifies someone who has made extensive contributions to the Brookline School Committee and comes closest to the naming standards that have been adopted by the Naming Committee.
Selwyn said he commends the students who participated in this process but feels as though the committee didn’t follow the proper process guidelines. He explained how the process should have required meetings for subcommittees and advisory boards to make the information open to the public so the community can make comments on the processes.
“I believe the best approach is that all three names should be referred to a moderator’s committee and a totally transparent and open process be adopted for as long as it takes to come up with a name that satisfies the town’s criteria that is open, fair, and does not contain any ethnic or racial predispositions,” Selwyn said.
Ken Liss, president of the Brookline Historical Society and member of the committee’s tax force on school names, said he favors Ridley but feels a personal connection to all three of the nominees and has something good to say about each of them.
“Ethel Weiss’s legacy reminds us that a school both is a community and is part of a community, and communities define relationships of many kinds,” Liss said.
Liss said he learned a lot from Sperber about town politics and about how difficult issues can be approached thoughtfully with room for reasoned discussion.
Speaking in favor of Ridley, Liss explained that she was not only a participant in civil and women’s rights, but she was also a Brookline school parent.
“Naming a school after Florida would be a recognition that some Brookline residents contributed to our town, to education, and to human progress despite obstacles and prejudices that those whom schools usually name did not have to face,” Liss said.
Commenti