The Montgomery County school board tabled the renaming Col. Zadok Magruder High School in Derwood on Tuesday due to disagreements over whether to begin the renaming process without the funds needed to do so or to delay it until Magruder undergoes a planned renovation project.
“We’re with the community. The name needs to be changed. It doesn’t reflect who we are as a system,” board Vice President Grace Rivera-Oven said before the vote to table during Tuesday’s board meeting in Rockville on Tuesday. “But right now, the issue is the funding that we just don’t have to make those changes.”
On Jan. 30, the board removed $650,000 that would go toward renaming Magruder from the proposed $3.65 billion operating budget for Mongomery County Public Schools for the upcoming fiscal year. At the time, board members noted the costs associated with renaming the school could be addressed as part of the district’s Capital Improvements Program (CIP).
But Tuesday’s meeting took another step forward in a new renaming process established in 2022 with a presentation of a report detailing how the Magruder community feels about the idea of renaming the school, showing the community is divided.
Why is the board considering renaming Magruder?
The proposed renaming stems from a 2019 report commissioned by the school board that found that six county schools are named after slave owners. A committee of MCPS staff members, Montgomery County historians and student researchers from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County conducted the review.
In addition to Magruder, the list includes Montgomery Blair High School and Francis Scott Key Middle School in Silver Spring, Richard Montgomery and Thomas S. Wootton high schools in Rockville, and John Poole Middle School in Poolesville.
Magruder, which opened in 1970, was named after a property owner who enslaved 26 people, according to the 1790 Census. He also played a key role in the formation of the state and is considered to be one of the founding fathers of Montgomery County.
In 2022, the board changed its policy concerning the renaming of schools, establishing new steps in the renaming process. In order for the board to consider renaming a school, the school community first must submit a petition calling for the measure. Then the board must review the petition and decide whether to move forward with community engagement on the renaming.
The Magruder community submitted a petition in February 2023, which was accepted by the board, making it the first school to undergo the new process. The Magruder community then held meetings in fall 2023 that discussed the history of Col. Zadok Magruder, values important to the school community and the pros and cons of changing the school name.
After community engagement, according to the renaming policy, MCPS staff must then present a report on the meetings to the board covering levels of community support and potential costs related to changing the name. The board could then make a decision and begin the process to come up with a new name for the school.
The board received that report Tuesday, a year after the Magruder community submitted its petition.
Peter Moran, MCPS chief of schools, and Frances Frost, assistant to the associate superintendent of the Office of Well-Being and Student Services, presented a summary of the community engagement sessions. Frost said survey results based on six community engagement sessions showed the Magruder community was split on whether to rename the school. About 43% said no to renaming, 32% said yes and 25% were unsure, she said.
Frost said those opposed to the name change primarily raised concerns about the cost of doing so and the importance of tradition. Those in favor noted changing the name could improve student mental health, primarily for Black students, and better reflect MCPS values.
Although MCPS initially estimated the renaming to cost $650,000, Frost said the actual cost would be roughly $993,000, including costs to update school facilities, such as providing new signs; rebranding athletics; and dealing with extracurricular items and other operating items.
Frost noted the board had several options: keep the name; change the name and make the almost $1 million changes in fiscal year 2026, which begins July 1; or delay the renaming and the costs associated with it.
Board tables the decision
The meeting included a lengthy discussion over parliamentary procedure and the possible implications of motions made by the board.
Some board members, including Laura Stewart and Grace Rivera-Oven, wanted to vote to rename the school and proceed with choosing a new name, but not move forward with steps like rebranding that would incur financial costs until Magruder is scheduled for the renovation project in the district’s Capital Improvement Program (CIP).
However, board staff noted that the board can decide to rename the school without taking additional action, but a future board would not be bound to rename the school.
Julie Yang said establishing a new name for the school without changing the signage and other aspects of the building may be confusing for the community.
A motion by member Brenda Wolff to delay renaming consideration until Magruder is included in the CIP failed, only receiving votes from Wolff, Yang, Karla Silvestre and Student Member of the Board Praneel Suvarna and so the motion failed, and the matter was tabled. Zimmerman, Stewart and Rivera-Oven opposed the motion. Board member Rita Montoya did not attend the meeting. According to school board policies, motions only pass if they have 5 votes, which is a majority of the board.
Magruder currently isn’t included in the district’s CIP, although many students have testified to issues in the building including moldy ceiling tiles, mice, faulty heating and air conditioning and broken chairs.
According to the fiscal year 2021 CIP, Magruder was scheduled to undergo updates to building systems and other programmatic needs with a completion date of 2027. In the fiscal year 2023 CIP, the completion date was delayed until 2029. In the 2025 CIP, Magruder is now listed as having “to be determined completion date.”
Where do the other school renamings stand?
Magruder is currently the only school that’s submitted a petition and undergone the new renaming process. According to the school board communications coordinator Christie Scott, the board has not received renaming petition from any of the other five schools named after enslavers.
One MCPS school has been renamed in recent years. In 2021, MCPS changed the name of Col. E Brooke Lee Middle School in Silver Spring to Odessa Shannon Middle School. The school was renamed in the wake of the 2020 death of George Floyd, a black man killed by a white police officer in Minneapolis.
According to a Montgomery History report, Lee was a powerful political figure and developer of Silver Spring in the 1920s who included restrictive covenants for residential properties that he built and sold. The covenants “prevented Blacks, Jews and others from purchasing the homes – and solidifying segregated patterns in the county’s housing for decades,” the report states.
Shannon was elected to the school board in 1982 and served until 1984. She was the executive director of the Montgomery County Human Rights Commission and founder of the county’s Human Rights Hall of Fame, as MoCo360 reported at the time of the school’s renaming. Shannon died in May 2020 at the age of 91.
Bethesda Today reporter Ginny Bixby contributed to this report
