School board votes 13-0 to rename Thatcher Brook Primary School
February 12, 2021 | By Emmett Gartner The Harwood Union School Board has voted unanimously to support renaming Thatcher Brook Primary School and setting up a community-centered process to identify a new name.
The 13-0 vote at Wednesday’s board meeting came after more than an hour of discussion, first with public comment from community members including several young students, and then amongst board members. The debate grew from a discussion started in the fall after research into the background of the school’s namesake revealed that the 18th-century man Partridge Thatcher owned a number of slaves in his lifetime.
Originally called “Thatcher’s Branch,” presumably after Partridge Thatcher in the late 1700s, Thatcher Brook flows from Waterbury Center, along Vermont Rt. 100 where it meets with Graves Brook, and along Stowe Street to the Winooski River near Dac Rowe Park. Photo by Gordon Miller
Born in 1714 in Lebanon, Conn., Thatcher was one of the original landowners when Waterbury was chartered in 1763. He and several others from his then-home of New Milford, Conn., traveled here in 1782 to survey the territory, building a cabin along a brook they dubbed “Thatcher’s Branch,” known today as Thatcher Brook. He returned to Connecticut where historians believe he died in 1786.
His history as a slaveholder was offered to the community last fall by Duxbury researcher Life LeGeros, a member of the newly formed Waterbury Area Anti-Racism Coalition. Together with Harwood Union High School students interested in social justice issues and the Waterbury Public Library, they hosted an online event in December to discuss whether this knowledge should prompt changing the name of the pre-kindergarten-to-fourth-grade school.
A majority of the more than 100 attendees at the December forum supported renaming the school and the high school students conveyed that message to the school board in January.
The public weighs in
The board put out a call for public comment ahead of Wednesday’s meeting and board members said they received calls and emails. Several students, teachers, and parents joined the video conference meeting to offer their comments.
Two young students addressed the board with board Chair Caitlin Hollister asking just for their first names.
“I think that we should rename the school,” said Duxbury student, Griffin. “I don’t feel like kids should learn about [the history of the school’s name] right after they get out of that school and then be terrified.”
Charlotte, from Waterbury, echoed Griffin’s point: “You don’t want kids there having to learn about this after they’ve supported the school. You kind of want people to have a choice.”
The board’s two Harwood Union High School members, seniors Charlotte Mays and Carlton Cummiskey, said older students have been discussing the issue as it relates to primary school students, and there is strong support for finding a new name. “[Thatcher] enslaved a 10-year-old and an 11-year-old, which is the same age as many students who go to Thatcher Brook,” Cummiskey said.
Waterbury resident Maroni Minter, himself a father, Black man, and organizer with the anti-racism coalition, confronted the significance of the school name and the argument that it comes from the brook, not necessarily Thatcher himself.
“I just want to be blunt and say that we have so many different brooks and rivers in our area, and Black and brown students have options to go swim and fish in brooks or rivers that are not named after former slave owners,” Minter said. “Whereas when we’re talking about school, we’re talking about an entire institution that is named after a slave owner. This is the only school in our area, which means for BIPOC students, they have no choice.”
(The acronym BIPOC refers to individuals who are Black, Indigenous and People of Color)
Minter also reflected on conversations he said he’s had with individuals who were involved in renaming what was Waterbury Elementary School from 1965 to 1997 to Thatcher Brook Primary School. When Waterbury and Duxbury schools merged to form a new district, school officials looked to avoid town names for the school buildings. The new middle school built in Duxbury near the Crossett Brook took that name and the Waterbury school was renamed for the brook that runs nearby.
“Most of them have said that in no way would they have approved the school to be named after the brook if they had known that the brook was named after a slave owner,” Minter revealed. “Now that we know this, let’s do the right thing. Let’s listen to the students. Let’s listen to the community members, and let’s put this battered chapter of our town history in the history books.”
Benefits of waiting
Although the board’s vote was unanimous, it was distinguished by a variety of opinions as members arrived at their decision.
Some board members said they thought that changing a school name required a longer, more thorough investigation to encompass a broader look at the social climate in all of the Harwood district’s schools and an examination of the name affiliations of all of the schools as well.
Fayston member Theresa Membrino called for a new school-climate survey, similar but more in-depth than the one the district conducted in 2019 that found approximately a quarter of the students at Thatcher Brook and other schools “felt socially and emotionally unsafe” at school.
“I think we need to really dig in and understand what makes students feel unsafe, particularly BIPOC students and other minority students,” Membrino said, urging that the process involve more data and public engagement.
Waterbury board member Kelley Hackett supported that suggestion. “I think that this is just the beginning of the conversation. I would like to revisit the climate survey and why students don’t feel safe in our schools, because that was all before they found out about the Thatcher name,” Hackett said.
She also raised the question of costs associated with a name change. “Part of me is also worried about the whole budget piece of it as well and how much is this going to cost and what will be taken away from students, knowing that more should not be taken away from them,” Hackett said.
Reached Thursday, Superintendent Brigid Nease and Finance Director Michelle Baker said they did not anticipate significant costs with a name change. The 1997 change was part of a district merger that involved legal costs, Nease said, while this is much simpler and straightforward.
Costs would likely be no more than a few thousand dollars, Baker said, associated mainly with new signage that would require permitting as well and details such as a new logo and updates to the school website and various documentation.
“On a $40 million budget, the cost will be miniscule. That said, I can't imagine given the reasons why this change is occurring that money would be a factor,” Nease said. “That would be the equivalent of saying we cannot spend money on anti-racism work or change.
A name forever changed
Waterbury board member Michael Frank also suggested broadening the board’s focus, but with a closer look at the historic context of other community names -- even that of one district town -- that people likely don’t think about.
“I think we need to look holistically at all of the names,” Frank said. He pointed to the town of Fayston, where the elementary school is named for the town whose namesake family, the Fays, were prominent in early Vermont history. According to The Problem of Slavery in Early Vermont by Harvey Amani Whitfield, Frank pointed out, the Fays were members of the same congregation as a slave-holding minister. And although other congregants denounced the cleric, the Fays remained silent.
“Where are we going, what’s our end goal, what’s our desired outcome?” Frank asked the board.
Board Chair Hollister, also representing Waterbury, and others were more direct when describing the intentions of their votes.“I think one of the things that we have to decide, is do we keep that conversation in a more binary, ‘will we/won’t we’ change the name, or do we make that decision and then allow a community conversation that might be a year long that would revolve around ‘what would you like to see in a name?’” Hollister asked.
Nease weighed in, calling the nuanced, wide-ranging discussion “a breath of fresh air,” but she also urged the board not to delay the decision. “I think there’s more of an urgency than you realize,” she said. “If one student in your care and custody goes to Thatcher Brook and has a negative, concerning, or traumatic experience, that's one too many for something that could have been prevented and something that is now known that wasn’t known before.”
Nease said the story behind the school’s name already has changed its perception. “Thatcher Brook is no longer the Thatcher Brook that it was. It will never be the school named after the brook,” she said. “It will always have this debate before it as long as it remains Thatcher Brook.”
Teachers at Thatcher Brook Primary School cheer on graduating fourth grade students in a drive-by celebration in June 2020. File photo by Gordon Miller
Nease suggested that concern about whether the approach was thoughtful or detailed enough could be channeled into the process around seeking a new name that suits the community and the times. “I encourage you to make the decision to change the name and move on with the engagement and the hard work, and find a name for the school that can be celebrated and inclusive and forward-thinking for all our students,” she said.
Waterbury’s fourth representative on the board, Alex Thomsen, agreed. “It has been pretty clear to me right from the get-go that this is the right thing to do,” she said.
Owning the decision
Ultimately, Hollister steered the board to a vote. “I rather be able to say to folks who don’t want to see a name change: I hear you. I understand that you don’t want this name to change, but that decision has been made. Now I would love to hear what you would like to see, what’s important to you moving forward in terms of this school being representative of our community,” she explained.
Nease and others acknowledged that the entire exercise is emotionally and even politically charged. Hollister suggested that the board’s decision to move ahead with a name change signals to the community that the board has set this priority. “We need to hold some of that burden and say that this was a board decision, and we are endorsing it, and we are pushing something forward, whenever that may be,” she said. “The more our board can own some of the hard decisions here, the more we can protect some of the folks who may potentially feel some of that backlash, though I can’t make any guarantees or promises.”
The board voted 13-0 to support "changing the name of Thatcher Brook Primary School to further our mission to create a welcoming and inclusive environment and will determine a process that includes community members and students to identify a new name."
One board seat is vacant as Duxbury member Alec Adams recently resigned; his position will be filled in the Town Meeting Day election.
Hollister said the board at its upcoming meetings will discuss how to move ahead to work on finding a new name for Thatcher Brook school. The process should include the board, students, administration and staff, and community groups, she said.
“We also very much want to extend this process to all of our community members whether or not they have a physical connection to our schools right now,” she added.