Remember the name Malachi Suarez. Malachi is a fourth-grader at James K. Polk Elementary School in California’s Central Valley. He became internet famous after petitioning and appealing to the Central Valley Unified School Board to rename his school after he had researched the slave-owning past of former President James K. Polk.
Malachi created an online petition at www.Change.org asking for support in requesting the district rename the school.
The petition reads:
I request your help with changing the name of James K. Polk Elementary School in Central Unified School District.
James K. Polk was a slave owner and he was against abolition. He also embraced the term manifest destiny. Manifest Destiny means God says that European American settlers are better than people of color, and European American settlers are more deserving of the land. Polk used the idea of manifest destiny to gain support for his war with Mexico. The main reason he provoked a war with Mexico was to acquire the western territory.
You can read the entire petition here.
Malachi is only a few signatures away from his stated goal of 2,500. You can help him get there by signing on.
Malachi has personally addressed the school board on numerous occasions during public comments. In August, he was given 25 minutes to address the board on his proposal. Watch it below and share with your networks.
The name of Polk Elementary remains unchanged, despite the fact that Malachi has over 2,000 signatures on the petition and has addressed the board with community support. When looking at the school website, you won’t find any mention of the request to rename the school. The school website can be found here.
I watched a few meetings and found the Board of Education to be dismissive of the request and, at times, even hostile! I watched one meeting from September on the district YouTube channel and was shocked by comments from some board members.
During public comment, Gabriel Suarez called in after the board president only gave the public 30 seconds to call in. Because of the quality, I could not understand what was being said. In addition, transcriptions provided by YouTube are not available during this phone call portion. I also learned that Trustee Paul did not want to entertain public comments during the September meeting. It does appear that the Suarez family, in general, is very vocal. Aside from his request to change the name of the school, Malachi called in during the meeting to address problems with homeschooling.
Yesenia Carrillo is the Board President. During the meeting, she announced that there is a committee being formed to review school names and mascot names to identify if any changes should be made.
Our team at La Comadre will continue to monitor the story for any updates. If you’d like to help Malachi, please sign his petition. Also, consider writing to the school board and committee in favor of renaming the school. Click here for information on the board of trustees and use the information below for any correspondence.
This piece originally appeared on La Comadre.
