CapFed Best News: Seaman school board s Frank Henderson elected to national position msn.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from msn.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
An advisory task force will collect community input on a potential name change for Seaman Unified School District 345 and return to the school board with a report, but not a recommendation, on such a change, the Seaman Board of Education decided on Monday evening.
After an hour of split public comment, the board voted to accept superintendent Steve Noble s proposal to create that advisory task force to guide the community conversation on a potential name change.
The board had not yet discussed a name change but had been under intense public pressure to broach the topic after an October report from two student journalists at the school confirmed rumors that district namesake Fred Seaman was a leader in the Topeka chapter of the Ku Klux Klan.
He found few friends by being himself.
“I was trying to prove myself instead of just being myself,” Patterson told The Capital-Journal. “I think it was basically my junior year when I decided I really just needed to be myself instead of trying to fit into a stereotype.”
Now a recent graduate from the high school, Patterson said he reflects back on what eventually became a lonely experience at Seaman, and on how most people’s perceptions of who he was supposed to be, came not from a place of malice, but one of ignorance.
And it’s a similar perception he sees when it comes to discussions of the district’s namesake, Fred Seaman, and his role as an exalted cyclops in the Ku Klux Klan.
Seaman Unified School District 345 may change its name.
In a newsletter sent to members of the Seaman community Wednesday, Adams said the district s next board meeting will focus on discussing how best to move forward. At the March 15 board meeting, he said, we will discuss a process around the district namesake that will ensure all members of our school community have an opportunity to be heard and represented in the discussion.
Adams said he plans to recommend the district s superintendent appoint a task force that would be in charge of gathering feedback from community members, providing public reports to the school board and presenting a final recommendation regarding a potential name change.
If COVID-19 data in Seaman Unified School District 345 and Shawnee County keep tracking for the better, the district could soon bring its middle and high school students back to full-time, in-person learning, superintendent Steve Noble told the Seaman Board of Education at its meeting Monday evening.
However, most of the district’s discussions on a secondary return to in-person learning are still in preliminary phases, Noble said. While he said an early timeline could put high school students back in classrooms after spring break, nothing is definitive at this point given the unpredictable nature of the pandemic. Those are just initial discussions, Noble said. I don t want to set firm dates out there yet because, again, we need to monitor those numbers to make sure we can achieve these goals.