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The Portland School Board will consider a resolution on Tuesday that would direct Superintendent Dr. Kimberlee Armstrong to begin renaming processes for four schools, including Jefferson High School and César Chávez K-8.
The resolution will also cover Cleveland High School and Robert Gray Middle School. (Jefferson and Cleveland have costly modernization projects set to begin this summer.) Portland Public Schools’ broader renaming policy puts the onus on individual school communities to initiate name change processes and select a new name for board consideration. If passed, the resolution would begin a selection process.
“Because the impact of renaming an existing school or amending an existing name is substantial in terms of potential public confusion, and administrative and fiscal costs, the burden is upon the party or parties proposing the name change to present persuasive evidence that the benefits of renaming outweigh community and School District impacts,” that policy reads.
According to the resolution, communities at each of these schools have brought forward requests to rename them.
One of the requests was widely expected. PPS has had to mull the name of César Chávez K-8 ever since an explosive investigation by The New York Times published in March found Chávez, a co-founder of the United Farm Workers union, had sexually abused multiple young girls and women throughout his career. (The city of Portland appears on track thus far to change the name of César E. Chávez Boulevard to Campesinos Boulevard.)
Students at Cleveland High School have long pushed for a renaming of the school, currently named for former President Grover Cleveland. Cleveland’s administration was responsible for the mass displacement of Native Americans across the U.S., and signed acts to extend the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. As The Cleveland Clarion reported in December, a growing number of students at the school have felt increasingly uncomfortable with what its name represents.
Similarly, the Robert Gray Middle School community has pushed against Gray’s history of violence against Native Americans and involvement in the slave trade. The name change already appears to be partly underway, according to reporting in the Hillsdale News. “Over the past six years, RGMS students have questioned our school’s namesake,” read a November email from its principal, Lisa Newlyn.
The renaming of Jefferson High School is perhaps the most controversial on the list. A recent attempt to change the name in 2018 resulted in little movement, even given Thomas Jefferson’s slave ownership. Students, families, educators and longtime neighborhood residents, many of them Black, fondly refer to the school as “Jeff,” and for many of its alumni, the name’s become a key part of the school’s identity. Jefferson students consulted back in 2018 did not see reason to rename the school at the time, as Portland Monthly reported. A statue of Thomas Jefferson was toppled during the Black Lives Matter protests in June 2020, and has not been replaced.
School Board member Rashelle Chase-Miller emphasized that renaming must be initiated by the school community itself. “I know these conversations have been in the works for years,” she says of the Jefferson renaming. “I’d heard that once the boundary work was done with Jefferson Is Rising, this would be brought forward.” (Jefferson principal Drake Shelton in 2025 told community members that the renaming would likely come alongside the boundary process.)
The resolution in front of the board on Tuesday does not contain any new names. It will merely kick off renaming processes at the schools. (Recent PPS renamings have taken months, if not a couple of years.)
The board on Tuesday will also consider approving a new mascot and name for Joseph Lane Middle School in Southeast Portland, swapping the quasar for the bears, and changing Lane to Brentwood Middle School.
