Not sure I want to know the answer but how many of these schools were named Robert E Lee in the same way/ era as the confederate statues were put up? How many had significant non-white student populations at the time. Or perhaps not the same time as the statues but after desegregation?
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Naming schools after traitors only became popular in the 50’s and 60’s. While I am unwilling to imply coincidence means causality, it is odd that this became a trend while school districts were being forced to integrate. /s
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it’s(*) probably modern because so many of the schools are modern ( relatively speaking. ) basically, the baby boom required new schools is what id imagine.
tangent: one of the really twisted things about school integration was that - so far as i understand - because whites only schools were in such better condition than blacks only schools, generally children of color were the ones who got bussed… adding extra hours and extra work to their lives that white students didn’t have
eta: (*) the naming, not the racism obviously. the racism train is never late
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Fairfax County, VA
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the nearest one to me was in tyler, texas but there are at least 9 others still named after the traitor lee across the state.
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As a non-American, I find it bizarre that you even name schools, Airports, public buildings etc after people. I’m used to those things generally been named after the area they are in, and not people.
I presume this trend started as a way to ‘honour’ people? When did it start?
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The treatment they sometimes received back then didn’t make it any easier…
The problems have not been resolved, and schools are still struggling to find solutions:
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Wait, what? I’m not from the US, so a lot of its news slips past me but this is surprising.
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It sucks less than the trend to name sportsball facilities after corporations. 
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Oh, so are these the sort of dead-ender racist bastards you desperately want me to reconcile with, for the sake of your dear nation?
That’s hardly a phenomenon unique to the United States. How many thousands of schools, cities, plazas, buildings etc. around the world are named after Catholic saints alone?
You’re from Sydney, right? A perusal of school names there turned up no shortage of schools named after people. Literally the first result for a Google search on “schools in Sydney Australia” was James Ruse Agricultural High School.
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Except for teacher and students and other community members that fought against the racism of the rest of the school…
Right?
Also…
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I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Fuck Jacksonville. It’s a piece of shit city even by the standards of Florida. One of the most conservative cities in the country, racist, and highly segregated.
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In a district just outside the former capital of the Confederacy, I was dismayed to see the school I would be working at had the school colors red, white and blue, and the mascot “the patriots.” Soon after, I learned that another high school in our district was named Lee-Davis High School, and its mascot was “the Confederates.” Unsurprisingly, especially after 2016, there were multiple accounts of racist graffiti and stuff scrawled on the walls. Finally, this past year, after George Floyd was murdered, the school board (barely, in a 4-to-3 vote) decided to change the school’s name. And, of course, countless racist parents lost their shit on the county’s Facebook page.
In summary, American education is a land of contrasts. Between different flavors of racist bullshit.
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Humorous proposal for not changing the name of the school per se.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_E.Lee(playwright)
I wouldn’t consider religious schools named after semi-mythical figures as being example of things named after people.
Actually just currently living in Sydney, I started in NZ and have been a resident of UK, US and Japan over the years as well.
But you are right in that it is not exclusively a US phenomena but if you look down the rest of the list of Sydney Schools you would find that the vast majority of them are not named after people.
Well it seems to me that the kids in that school are getting an excellent and very practical education. I trust they will be on the front lines going forward.
It’s not like every school in the United States is names after a famous American either. The schools I attended growing up were named after the cities they were in or some other thing like a local species of tree.
Most of the ones that aren’t named for people directly use the name of the city which itself was named after Thomas Townshend, 1st Viscount Sydney.
I can’t say if “naming schools after people” is more of a phenomenon in the United States than elsewhere but it certainly isn’t uncommon in any of the places I’ve traveled.
In the eyes of the people who named this high school that’s exactly what Robert E. Lee is.
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The public schools in New Orleans have been mostly awful for a very long time. Following integration, almost anyone who could sent their children to private or catholic school. Not wanting to pay for 2 schools, they also fought to keep their tax money from the public schools. After Hurricane Katrina decimated the city, the public school system was abandoned. At first the state took over most schools while some became charter schools. Now they’re all charters. So the public schools I grew up with are mostly still there with the same name and the same underfunded problems, but no longer with any city school board/system in charge of them
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Holy crap. That’s a long-rolling disaster.
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