School Renaming Survey Summary

School Names

The naming of new school facilities is guided by School Board Policy 6510, Naming School Facilities.  Regulation 6510 applies only to the naming of an area of a school facility, grounds and/or program.   

Email the Division of Planning & GIS Services with questions or comments on school names, or the overall name review process.

School Board Review of School Names

School Renaming Project - Fact Sheet

In June 2020, the School Board initiated discussion on an action plan to combat systemic racism which included a review of all Loudoun County Public Schools facility names and mascots.  Criteria for this comprehensive review of LCPS facility names included:

  • Determine if any schools have been named for Confederate leaders or the Confederate cause;

  • Determine if any schools may have been named for individuals who lived in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries during the period when slavery was a fundamental part of the economic, cultural and political systems in Virginia and Northern Virginia; or 

  • Determine whether any schools have been named for individuals or movements that promoted and implemented racial segregation laws in Virginia during the eras of Jim Crow and Massive Resistance in Virginia.

The school-by-school name review was divided into three phases to facilitate a more focused approach.  School names reviewed in Phase 1 included those with a potential association with the outlined research criterion.  Phase 2 included schools named after a person.  Phase 3 includes all other schools not previously reviewed by History Matters and which have been named for places, ideals or inanimate objects.

In November 2021, the School Board requested the assistance of the Black History Committee, Friends of Thomas Balch Library, in reviewing the Phase 1 and Phase 2 names and narratives prepared by History Matters, LLC.  The collaborative review effort included any recommendation by the Black History Committee for the potential renaming of a school(s) in relation to the School Board’s action plan to combat systemic racism.  The Black History Committee reviewed the Phase 1 and Phase 2 school names and recommended ten (10) school names be looked at more closely for potential renaming.  

All school renaming processes will follow policy and include an opportunity for public engagement to incorporate communities in the conversation on the respective school name. The process to consider the renaming of a school should also be a teaching moment for the students attending the school. 

Frances Hazel Reid ES Rename Committee
Mercer MS Rename Committee

Email the Division of Planning & GIS Services with questions or comments on school names, or the overall name review process.