Virginia school board votes to restore Confederate names to two schools

School board members in Virginia’s Shenandoah County voted early Friday to restore the names of two schools that previously honored Confederate leaders – four years after those names had been removed.

School board members in Virginia’s Shenandoah County voted early Friday to restore the names of two schools that previously honored Confederate leaders – four years after those names had been removed. The 5-1 vote came after hours of public comment from people speaking on both sides of the issue. Vice Chairman Kyle L. Gutshall was the sole opposing vote. The board meeting began Thursday evening at the Peter Muhlenberg Middle School in Woodstock, Virginia, and ahead of the proceeding, supporters and opponents of the change told CNN they planned to speak during the public comment period. “I don’t want my kids learning about the Confederacy as being something to claim for community identity. I want them to know that they can look at every child in their face and they can say ‘you matter, you belong here, you belong here.’ That is not what the old names do,” Sarah Kohrs, a mother of two students attending schools in the district, told CNN before the meeting. In the years since the 2020 killing of George Floyd, the names of Confederate leaders, Confederate monuments and symbols have been removed from numerous schools, universities, military facilities and even the Washington National Cathedral’s windows. Nearly four years ago, the Shenandoah County School Board made such a decision and moved to rename Stonewall Jackson High School and Ashby Lee Elementary School. The schools had been named after Confederate Gens. Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, Robert E. Lee and Turner Ashby.