What’s in a name? Reviewing the school naming process

Royal Examiner got two comments on the story about the middle school naming and re-naming, which the writer felt compelled to reply to with a little background on the process of the naming of the two new county high schools that opened for the 2007-08 school year.  Since there is additional information regarding the school naming process included in those replies, our editorial staff decided to reprint those two comments and a slightly revised version of the writer’s replies on our Local News page to reach out to readers who may have read the story prior to the comments exchange taking place.

Mike
I don’t think there should a “Warren County” name in any school if there’s more then one. How can you have a county name school when you have county students going to more then one school?

The sun set on old WCHS as a high school at the end of the 2006-07 school year. Photos/Roger Bianchini

Debbie

When they built Skyline they should have named it Warren County High School. Then the current Warren County Middle School would not need a name change and the expense of changing colors etc. The Skyline schools could have just as easily been on the east side of town.

Writer’s replies

Mike, we see your point, but tend to disagree on the grounds of WHY abandon one school’s history simply because time is passing and a community is growing.  To hear it phrased more elegantly, see final paragraph of the reply to “Debbie” below, quoting the Superintendent of Warren County Public Schools at the time the two new high schools opened for the 2007-08 school year.

Looking at it from a purely physical proximity perspective you are probably correct, Debbie (except as one reader pointed out to me, Skyline Drive is NOT on the east side of town, hence why name a school there Skyline?).  In addition, as this reporter recalls there were multiple factors involved in determining the names of the two new high schools that opened the 2007-08 school year here.

When the transition to a two high school system between the 2006-07 and 2007-08 school years took place, it was observed by some, including this reporter, that the new high school would be – relatively speaking – in spitting distance out the back of old WCHS; while Warren County Junior High (opened 1999) that was being expanded and renovated into a second high school was further across town to the east.

Warren County Junior High School opened its doors in 1999; here it is under renovation to reopen those doors as a high school for the 2007-08 school year.

But there was a school system administrative thought that to strip “Warren County” from the junior high’s name when it reopened as a high school would make its students feel sort of like second-class “citizens”.  The rationale being at least in part that they already had the name, and their physical plant as a high school was sort of an improvised, perhaps less impressive structure than the two-story, new from-the-ground-up high school would be.

The Skyline High complex under construction in 2006.

So, the concluding strategy was to let the new high school establish its own identity and traditions under a new banner reflecting its proximity to Skyline Drive’s northern entrance; while letting the renovated Warren County Junior High and the eventual middle school that would feed it as a high school retain the history of the Warren County High School name.

The irony perhaps is that now that Luray Avenue building within which much of that “Warren County” history was created from the 1940s on will no longer carry the name.

But as then Warren County Public Schools Superintendent Pamela McInnis said at the time:  “Kids are very adaptable and I think once they get into the new buildings and see what they have to offer, things will go very well.  Warren County High School is not going away, that’s what’s important.

Homecomings come and Homecomings go, but rallying together to beat the opponent – from whichever site – is ALWAYS fun.

The 2006 Homecoming Court gets serious as they are reminded it was the last year the Wildcats would form up for Homecoming parade at the school on the hill.

“What Warren County High School means and is, is not the facility it’s in; but the people and what goes on inside those walls makes the school what it is. So that will all still be there, it just won’t be the same physically.  Perpetuating that Warren County High School name, it will have the same traditions as the current Warren County High School has.  And that’s what people need to be tied to, as opposed to a building itself.”