Board Expected To Remove Raiders Nickname From Loudoun County HS

LEESBURG, VA — The Loudoun County School Board plans to vote Monday on whether to change Loudoun County High School's nickname from Raiders to a name not associated with the confederacy. The school's mascot was named after a battalion formed by Confederate Col. John Mosby during the U.S. Civil War known as Mosby's Raiders who were famous for their guerrilla strikes on Union forces.

Loudoun County Public Schools Superintendent Eric Williams proposed the renaming of the school mascot as part of a presentation at Tuesday's board meeting. His presentation summarized the school system's plan to combat systemic racism. At the meeting, a majority of board members indicated they were in favor of removing the school's nickname.

Loudoun County High School, located in Leesburg, was founded in 1954. It has an enrollment of about 1,500 students.

The focus on Loudoun County High School's nickname is part of a growing national debate on Confederate statues and monuments and whether they should be removed. Across the South, the conversation also includes schools that are named after Confederate generals, slave owners and segregationists.

The Loudoun County School Board chose to delay voting on getting rid of the Raiders name at Tuesday's meeting. They decided to wait until Monday to vote in order to give the public a chance to have their voices heard on the proposal.

The Loudoun County High School community picked Raiders as its nickname when the school opened in 1954. School Board member Ian Serotkin (Blue Ridge) explained during Tuesday's meeting that a Confederate flag was included in the school emblem from 1960 to 1979. The visual image of the emblem has been altered since 1979, but the school system has never considered changing the school's nickname until this year.

In Fairfax County, the school board has looked at renaming Mosby Woods Elementary School because it was also named after John Mosby, Serotkin noted.

On Tuesday, the Fairfax County School Board voted to change the name of Robert E. Lee High School in Springfield. Once a new name is chosen, it will take effect in the 2020-2021 school year. In recent years, officials in Fairfax and Arlington counties have renamed other schools associated with the Confederacy.

Two weeks ago, Serotkin had asked administrators whether any of Loudoun County's schools had names linked to the Confederacy. School officials found that no schools were named after people associated with the Confederacy. They found that only Loudoun County High School's mascot was named after the Confederate band of soldiers known as Mosby's Raiders.

During Tuesday's meeting, school board Chairwoman Brenda Sheridan (Sterling) noted that the Sully Elementary School could be subject to a name change because it shares a name with the nearby Sully Plantation.

School board member Beth Barts (Leesburg) told her fellow board members that removing the Raiders name from Loudoun County High School would be costly. She wanted to make sure the school is not shortchanged in other ways due to the high cost of removing the name from the school's walls and fields and purchasing new athletic uniforms.

"Raider is physically integrated everywhere at the school," she said. "We need to be aware of the financial implications.” But Barts also emphasized that she is not opposed to changing name for cost reasons.

If the board votes to remove the name, board members agreed that students, alumni, teachers and families should play a central role in picking a new nickname for Loudoun County High School.