The student and desk logo lives to see another day.
By a 4-3 decision, the school board decided to push the district’s renaming and rebranding project off to a later date, citing a handful of other issues within the district that should be prioritized instead.
Trustees Bob Thompson, Betty Bekkering, and Gillian Burnett all voted to carry on with the rebrand right now.
Board Chair Rachael Webber, Vice Chair Craig Brennan, and trustees Cory Antrim and Erica McLean voted to postpone the changes, saying the project should not be pulling resources from figuring out other issues plaguing the school district, like bussing and staff shortages.
Webber put forward the recommendation to delay the project.
“I have listened to the public,” she told the board. “Since the survey has come out, just on social media stories alone, 400, 500 comments of people saying ‘why?'”
She said changing the district’s name and logo will not change the real issues that are underneath, and that she “is not here to run a fashion show, I am here to do the work that is needed to fix this.”
Bekkering spoke next, and did not agree.
“I think that it has been in the process for a long time,” she said.
She also mentioned the survey that the district has had up on their website over the last few weeks that 3,000 people have completed.
“With that number of responses, I think for us to pivot right now would send a really bad optic to the community.”
Antrim criticized the survey itself, saying he felt it was “quite guided,” and lacked important information like the cost of a rebrand.
“The other concern is that there is time that is put into this,” he said. “Even if we go forward with it, it is taking away time from really important work that is on our doorstep right now.”
It was decided that the project would be revisited at a later time, and that the survey results would be compiled into usable data for that time.
The survey is still open until Friday (December 16), you can find it here.
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