The San Diego Unified School Board voted unanimously Tuesday to rename Henry Clay Elementary for Bertha Pendleton, the first Black and first female superintendent of the school district.
The decision comes more than a year after parents first asked the district to remove Clay’s name from their school, and it caps a renaming process led by staff that most board criticized as messy and not transparent.
Clay, a 19th-century Kentucky politician, kept at least 122 enslaved people and spearheaded controversial legislation that preserved slavery in the South.
“I want to center tonight the organizers who … recognized there is no possible way, in particular, a Black child should have to go to a school called Henry Clay,” said board Trustee Cody Petterson at Tuesday’s meeting. “It’s completely preposterous.”
The Rolando school will now be called Dr. Bertha O. Pendleton Elementary School. Temporary signage will display the name until the school is renovated in 2026.
Pendleton, who grew up in segregated Alabama, was the valedictorian of her high school class, earned a degree in biology from Knoxville College and graduated with honors . She started what would be a 40-year career in San Diego Unified as a teacher at Memorial Junior High in 1957 and worked as a counselor and in various roles before becoming superintendent in 1993.
Under her leadership, she pushed for smaller class sizes, better reading programs and zero-tolerance policies for violence. She also opened 14 new schools.
“Dr. Bertha Pendleton represents the things we want to see in our children and in our schools,” said board Trustee Sharon Whitehurst-Payne, who represents the sub-district that includes the school, at Tuesday’s meeting. “If you’re talking about a leader to bring the community together, she’s a leader.”
Students, parents and community at the meeting hailed the choice of Pendleton, calling her a positive and empowering role model for students.
“Dr. Pendleton has dedicated her life to advancing her own education against incredible odds and to improving the outcomes for all the students that she served. There is no argument against that,” said Jerrod Tucker, one of the parents who led the initial renaming Clay effort.
But what has provoked argument is how district officials went about the process of ultimately choosing a new name.
A ‘messy’ process
More than a year ago, parents of the school launched a petition that collected more than 1,100 signatures not only to remove Clay’s name but to choose a new name that was “restorative” and could help make up for the decades the school bore Clay’s name.
Initially, district staff came up with the name “Rolling Hills Leadership Elementary” and presented the name to the board at its meeting two weeks ago for a first reading.
To the original petitioning parents, the name was generic, not restorative, and was offensive, considering that the district had ed over their list of suggested names of accomplished Black leaders, Pendleton among them.
Both parents and board trustees have called the district’s process for choosing a new name “messy” and not transparent.
For one, they said, the district left it up to a renaming committee to recommend a new name — but that committee’s hip was kept secret and its meetings were hidden from the public, contrary to past district policy. The committee was appointed by Superintendent Lamont Jackson, whereas in the past, the board had appointed committee .
The district used to have a more detailed school facility naming policy that included specific committee composition requirements and guidelines for choosing a name. It replaced that policy in 2021, the first year of Jackson’s superintendency, with one that was shorter and had fewer naming guidelines. The new policy also let the superintendent decide the committee’s makeup and size.
In March, in response to questions about why the new committee’s information was not public, a district spokesperson had told The San Diego Union-Tribune that the was not subject to the Brown Act, the state’s transparency law for public bodies. The spokesperson said that’s because it was a “staff-level advisory committee” under the direction of the superintendent, rather than of the board.
However, trustees have since said the committee was supposed to be subject to the Brown Act, because it is mandated by the board.
Trustees also took issue with the fact that although the committee had sent out a survey to the school community with possible name choices, it had not included information about the people whose names were listed as options.
The original petitioning parents were not meaningfully included in any part of the process.
“This has a funny feel to it, if you will, because they were ignored. The 1,100 people who brought it to us in the beginning, they were ignored,” Whitehurst-Payne said at the meeting two weeks ago. “We need to discuss it openly, because we don’t want a Brown Act violation. We need a process that’s transparent to all of us.”
Jackson said at that board meeting that people shouldn’t blame the process and suggested the complaints could be attributed to sour grapes from people whose preferred option wasn’t picked.
“I just want to make sure we’re not landing it on the process, per se,” he said. “Others who voted for the other four (names) are going to be upset.”
At Tuesday’s meeting, Jackson apologized.
“It’s my responsibility to create the conditions, the processes, and we will be better, I commit to that,” he said.
He added, “This is not a place for us to point fingers and blame. This is a time to come together.”
Board trustees said they will work on establishing and appointing a new renaming committee that will adhere to the requirements of the Brown Act.
“We need to return to that process — but that process was not in place for this, for the renaming of Clay,” said Trustee Richard Barrera.
What happened to bell hooks
Pendleton was on the list of names that petitioning parents had recommended to the district, but the name was not their first choice.
They had instead asked for their school to be named after Black feminist poet and social justice activist bell hooks, whose work focused on the intersections of race, gender and class. hooks had spelled her name in lowercase letters to de-emphasize her individual identity.
“(hooks) spoke extensively on the power of love and an engaged education system to transform lives. These are values that we believe in and we’re certain that you do as well,” Tucker said at the board meeting two weeks ago.
At that last board meeting, trustees including Whitehurst-Payne and Barrera said they would vote immediately for bell hooks. Barrera said while he heard no compelling argument for choosing Rolling Hills, he heard such arguments from public commenters for choosing bell hooks.
But after Whitehurst-Payne and Barrera met with staff and parents at Clay’s campus last week, the trustees decided to recommend Pendleton instead of hooks. Whitehurst-Payne suggested it was a compromise between those who wanted Rolling Hills and those who wanted bell hooks.
“We felt that by doing this we would bring the school and its community closer together rather than to continue with the divisiveness that had occurred,” Whitehurst-Payne said in an interview. “We felt that it would be the right move to not have either group saying, ‘You got your way.'”
The two trustees also said they chose Pendleton because she was a local leader with a direct connection to the district.
Brian Jenkins, one of the original petitioning parents, is excited that Clay’s name will be removed from the school and thinks it’s great to honor the first Black and female superintendent of the district. But he questions why the board abandoned parents’ choice of hooks, two weeks after trustees said they would vote for her.
He also said at Tuesday’s meeting that none of the petitioning parents were invited to last week’s on-campus meeting with trustees.
“We don’t want to stand in the way of Pendleton, but that said, there are some kind of feelings of, ‘Why was bell hooks derailed?'” Jenkins said in an interview. “It’s a celebration tonight for sure, but it kind of predictably ends with an action by the board that feels not transparent.”
