Committee Offers Its Own Choice As Name For New Westover School

ARLINGTON, VA — A committee representing the Westover community has chosen the two names it will recommend to the Arlington School Board at its March 25 meeting for the new school due to open in August at the former Reed School property.

The primary recommendation is Westover Village Elementary and the alternate recommendation is Cardinal Elementary, according to meeting documents posted Friday on the school board's website.

The two names were chosen based on the results of a community questionnaire developed by a 12-member, school board-appointed committee that began meeting at the end of January.

Over four meetings, the committee members solicited nominations from their respective communities. They then voted and came up with five names — Cardinal, Compass, Exploration, Kaleidoscope, and Passport — for the Westover community to consider.

Members of the committee decided not to offer either Reed or McKinley as a choice, because they wanted a fresh start with the new school, according to Frank Bellavia, an APS spokesman who served as a non-voting staff liaison to the committee.

A total of 1,568 people responded in English to the community questionnaire by the March 12 deadline. Another four responded in Spanish. In addition, 631 comments were received by the committee.

The vote tally is as follows:

• Cardinal: 1,185 (75.6 percent)
• Compass: 741 (47.3 percent)
• Exploration: 515 (32.8 percent)
• Kaleidoscope: 492 (31.4 percent)
• Passport: 364 (23.2 percent)

Although Cardinal was the top choice by those who responded to the questionnaire, the naming committee voted to offer Westover Village as its primary recommendation based on the comments it received.

"The community thought the name of the school should be more reflective of the neighborhood where the school is located since it is a neighborhood school," according to the meeting documents.

The new school is located at 1644 N McKinley Road next to the Westover Branch Library in the Westover neighborhood.

The committee decided to offer Cardinal as an alternative recommendation in order to present the board with the community's top choice. The name was originally nominated for the questionnaire because it is the current school's mascot and the state bird of Virginia.

The renaming process started back in February 2020, when the school board adopted the School Moves initiative. This kicked off a musical-chairs-like process, sending a majority of students from McKinley Elementary to a new school to be built at the Reed site for the 2021-22 school year. In addition, students from the Arlington Traditional School (ATS) program will be shifted to McKinley and Key Immersion program students will be heading to ATS.

In January, the school board contacted civic associations in the area affected by the shift in school populations. The board appointed 12 representatives from these associations and the schools involved. These included staff members, parents, and school members from McKinley and Tuckahoe elementary schools, as well as representatives from:

• Highland Park Overly Knolls Civic Association
• Leeway Overly Civic Association
• Tara Leeway Heights Civic Association
• Westover Village Civic Association
• Madison Manor Civic Association
• Dominion Hills Civic Association

"Per our policy, the committee is to be made up from the current school community, students moving into that school and the surrounding civic associations," Bellavia said."In this case, we included the CAs surrounding McKinley as well."

Recently, Susan Campbell, a longtime county resident, launched an online petition with the hope of stopping the school board from changing the name of the Reed School Building. She would like to see the school retain its current historic name in honor of Walter Reed, the U.S. Army physician who pioneered the treatment for yellow fever in the early 1900s.

"I just retired from George Mason University," she said. "As an instructional designer, I can see many ways that the history of Walter Reed Elementary School can be tied to the curriculum in ways that would allow students to think critically, not only about history, but about what's going on today in terms of the pandemic."

According to Campbell, Reed Elementary also played an important role during an historic moment of transition for county schools.

"Arlington County was actually the first county in Virginia to become desegregated," she said. "Walter Reed Elementary School was actually successful in integrating Langston Elementary School. This was right after they had combined with Lee Elementary School, which is up on Lee Highway."

From Campbell's perspective, the Walter Reed Elementary "brand" has something to teach students at the school, both scientifically and historically. In addition to the loss of educational opportunities, she criticized the school board for not involving the larger Arlington community in the renaming process.

"Ideally, the Arlington County School Board would've followed the process that Alexandria did for renaming its schools with a lot of engagement," Campbell said. "They conducted very robust polls, received feedback from close to 15,000 residents. They're having a public forum. The Arlington School Board has taken a low-key approach."

As of Friday evening, Campbell's online petition had collected 285 signatures calling on the school board to keep Walter Reed as the name of the new school.

In 2018, the school board sparked a public debate when it changed the name of Washington-Lee High School to Washington-Liberty, after deciding it did now want to have the school associated with Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.

"The committee wanted to stay away from names of people where there could be the potential of that person being portrayed in a negative light," Bellavia said, of the Reed School recommendation.

The school board is scheduled to take a final vote on the new name at its April 8 meeting.