PORT TOWNSEND — A resolution by the state Board of Education recommending that school districts discontinue using mascots with Native American themes will be part of the ongoing debate about the use of “Redskins” as a team name for Port Townsend High School, but it will not change the process already in place.
The board passed a resolution Wednesday encouraging districts to review and re-evaluate mascot policies, saying mascots related to Native Americans may have an adverse affect on students.
“We are in the business of educating students,” said Barnal Baca, state board member, in a prepared statement.
“We need to remove any barrier that will impede student success.”
The use of “Redskins” by Port Townsend High School was the topic of several impassioned meetings over the summer, resulting in the School Board deciding to form a committee to discuss the issue at meetings during the school year, with the board making a decision at the end of the year.
On Friday, PT School Board President Jennifer James-Wilson said the resolution would be “part of the discussion” during the meetings.
“I am not surprised by this,” James-Wilson said. “I knew it was coming.”
“I understand where they are coming from in an educational standpoint,” she said.
“But this isn’t just a high school issue. It’s an identity issue for the community, and the feelings around this go deep.”
During several meetings, the Port Townsend School Board heard differing viewpoints: that the name was an offensive racial slur that teaches the wrong message to students and, conversely, that it is a source of school pride that has nothing to do with race.
The board voted July 23 to create the committee that will meet once a month during the 2012-2013 school year before presenting a report of its findings for possible School Board action.
James-Wilson said she had recruited five to seven members of the committee.
Their names will be revealed at the Oct. 15 board meeting, scheduled for 6 p.m. at the library at Port Townsend High School, 1500 Van Ness St.
James-Wilson said the first committee meeting will take place sometime in November.
“We will have a group of people who can engage in a conversation regardless of their own point of view,” she said.
“They will take a look at these issues that have told our story over time.”
Aaron Wyatt, the state board’s communications and partnerships director, said the impetus behind the resolution came from testimony received in May, as well as a ban of Native American mascots passed by Oregon’s Board of Education that month.
Eight Oregon schools are affected by the decision and have five years to change their mascots.
The Washington resolution is nonbinding because state law does not allow the board to impose an outright ban, Wyatt said.
A similar resolution was passed in 1993.
Wyatt said the board “does not have the data” as to how many schools would be affected.
Aside from Port Townsend, the question will be addressed at the Reardan-Edwall School District near Spokane, where all the sports teams are called the “Indians” and about a quarter of the district population is Native American or Alaskan Native.
Other Washington communities have had acrimonious battles over retiring a Native American mascot, including some districts close to Reardan.
The Colville Indians asked the Colville High School Indians to find a new name in 1997, but they’re still the Indians.
Ten schools have changed their mascots’ names in the past decade, including Eatonville Middle School, which went from the Warriors to the Eagles; Eisenhower Middle School in Everett, which went from the Warriors to the Patriots; and Issaquah High School, which changed from the Indians to the Eagles.
Jefferson County Reporter Charlie Bermant can be reached at 360-385-2335 or at charlie.bermant@peninsuladailynews.com.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
