By Hutton Marshall

After a contentious six-month effort that began last fall to rename Hillcrest’s Florence Elementary in honor of former state Sen. Christine Kehoe, local leaders behind the movement said the initiative is now on hold to allow for more community outreach and volunteerism to benefit the school.

The name-change campaign has been led by the GLBT Historic Task Force, which advocates for renaming entities after trailblazing LGBT leaders, such as San Diego’s Harvey Milk Street.

When the San Diego Unified School District (SDUSD) staff held the first community-outreach meeting at Florence Elementary in October 2014, presentations by GLBT Task Force Leaders Nicole Murray Ramirez and Chris Ward came along with endorsements by a large cohort of elected officials, including Councilmember Todd Gloria, Assembly Speaker Toni Atkins, Rep. Susan Davis, Supervisor Ron Roberts and Mayor Kevin Faulconer. The Hillcrest Business Association and the Greater San Diego Business Association also read supporting statements.

Then the parents spoke. While some came prepared with statements questioning the political motives of the effort, others criticized the lackluster outreach efforts made prior to the meeting, claiming they incidentally heard about the meeting earlier that day. Ramirez, who later said he was close to tears at the time, apologized to the parents for poor outreach efforts.

“I think you’ve been disrespected, and that certainly wounds me personally,” Ramirez said at the meeting.

Two more community meetings have taken place since, after which the task force was expected to request SDUSD’s Naming Committee consider the name change. Ramirez, however, issued a letter through a school board representative March 26 stating that the process would be lengthened to allow for more community outreach.

In the letter, Ramirez, an activist, writer and the leader of the Imperial Court de San Diego, maintained that the name change would bring new resources and attention to the school’s underserved student population.

“To compete with other schools and enhance its already impressive curriculum, a name change would provide the catalyst for a renewed interest in the school, right in the heart of the neighborhood.”

In a phone interview following the letter’s release, Ramirez acknowledged that insufficient outreach prior to proposing the name change was to blame for the frosty reception by Florence parents, teachers and others in the community. However, he blamed this poor outreach on false promises to be shepherded through the process by SDUSD Board Member Kevin Beiser, who joined the GLBT Historic Task Force to assist with the Florence initiative.

“We put it in [Beiser’s] hands because he asked us to put it in his hands … and it turned out that he just didn’t do a good job at all,” Ramirez said. “He just didn’t give us the right information. We never should have put it all in his hands.”

Ramirez said that Beiser hasn’t attended a GLBT Historic Task Force meeting since the first Florence outreach meeting went awry. The task force has now begun working more closely with SDUSD Board Member Richard Barrera instead, Ramirez said.

“We have started working, as we should have, with Richard Barrera, who has been upfront taking bullets for [Beiser], and I have more respect for [Barerra] for his honesty and his integrity, which to be very candid, I’ve found out that Kevin Beiser lacks.”

In response, Beiser said that although there have been minor hiccups, the effort to blame others is destructive to an initiative that remains promising.

“I think the bottom line — the punch line — is that this is what happens all too often in the LGBT community,” Beiser said. “When things don’t go perfectly swimmingly, people back off and they start blaming each other, and I don’t think is productive or healthy, because this thing isn’t dead. This isn’t done.

“The process is just going to take a little bit longer,” Beiser continued. “It’s going to require us to work collaboratively, and it’s going to mean the community needs to get more involved with Florence Elementary.”

On the other side of the debate, Florence parent Jacqueline Bacon McClish, a longtime volunteer who spoke against the name change at the first outreach meeting, was “very upset” by Ramirez’s letter explaining the motives for the delayed vote. In his letter, Ramirez stated that, “to date no one that has opposed the idea of a name change has stepped up to offer volunteer support or otherwise shown an interest in helping this neighborhood school.”

“The implication of the [previous] statement was obviously that those in opposition have no ‘interest in helping this neighborhood school,’ which is an insult to those of us volunteering for years,” McClish said, who added that she’s volunteered at the school for 10 years.

Ramirez said he was primarily referring to members of the Hillcrest Town Council, which unanimously voted against the name change earlier this year.

At the October outreach meeting, McClish said that although she supported Kehoe, she questioned the idea of honoring an LGBT leader at an elementary school, where issues like gay rights are seldom addressed.

“Sen. Kehoe, from what I understand, is a great advocate for issues such as gay rights and environmentalism,” McClish said at the meeting. “My sons are in middle and high school and these are very relevant to them; for example, they have friends who are coming out and they are following the stories about marriage equality.”

Beiser called this line of thinking a subtle form of discrimination against the LGBT community.

“That was basically code for discriminatory behavior, or a discriminatory point of view, in my opinion and in the opinions of some of the other LGBT members present at that meeting,” Beiser said.

“So you’re not going to name an elementary school after an African American?” Beiser asked rhetorically. “Should you name a high school after them, because by that age they’ll be able to decide whether or not they like African Americans?”

Although neither Ramirez nor Beiser had estimates of when a future vote to rename the school might take place, both remained optimistic and encouraged a spirit of volunteerism and community engagement to spurn change within the school.

“You’re never defeated until you quit,” Beiser said. “This isn’t something I think you quit. I think you still consider the idea of honoring Sen. Chris Kehoe in some way shape or form.

Ramirez said the GLBT Historic Task Force, the Imperial Court de San Diego and others are now committed to benefit Florence regardless of whether or not its renamed after Kehoe.

“I think our biggest regret is that we did not get involved with the school much earlier,” Ramirez said, pledging to provide backpacks and school supplies to students, and include the school in broader volunteer efforts.

“My outlook is, let’s establish a stronger record of community involvement and show truly where our heart is,” he said.

—Contact Hutton Marshall at [email protected].

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