(Credit: AISD)
The Austin Independent School District board of trustees on Monday moved forward with another name change for one of its schools named after a member of the Confederacy. Sidney Lanier High School, which has had that name for nearly six decades, will now become Juan Navarro Early College High School. Navarro is a former Lanier student who graduated in 2007, enlisted in the U.S. Army in 2008, and died in a roadside bomb attack in Afghanistan in 2012.
There was some debate over whether or not to keep the name as Lanier High School while dropping “Sydney” from the front end. Trustee Ann Teich, a Lanier High School alumni herself, said there was strong support within the Lanier community to keep the name, but she was unable to find the necessary support from her fellow board members to win approval for that proposal.
Five AISD campuses have now been renamed. Along with Lanier, Reagan High School, Fulmore Middle School, Allan Elementary, and Robert E. Lee Elementary has all been changed since the national debate over Confederate names and memorials ramped up following a mass shooting at a church in Charleston, SC.
