Name that new school: The balloting begins
By Bobby Bryant, Editor, editor@newsandpress.net
Ballots are going out this week as the Darlington County School District seeks a name for the new elementary school being built in Darlington.
Here are the six options being presented to residents and to affected students, parents and school employees for a name for the school that will replace Brunson-Dargan Elementary and J.L. Cain Elementary in fall 2020:
— EAST DARLINGTON ELEMENTARY. (The new school is on the east side of town.)
— FIRST STREET ELEMENTARY. (The school will be on First Street, next to Cain’s current site.)
— BRUNSON-DARGAN ELEMENTARY. (This honors officials’ 1953 decision to name this Wells Street school for educators Margaret Keith Dargan and Susannah Woods Brunson.)
— J.L. CAIN ELEMENTARY. (This honors officials’ 1953 decision to name this school after James Lawrence Cain, a pioneering black educator.)
— DR. WILLIE BOYD SR. ELEMENTARY. (Boyd retired last year after more than 50 years with the Darlington County School District, including working as a teacher and principal.)
— C.C. WEARING ELEMENTARY. (School-district officials say Wearing was a longtime principal at Cain Elementary.)
School district spokeswoman Audrey Childers said any resident who lives in the 29540 or 29532 ZIP codes can vote on the new name.
She said ballots will be sent home with students attending Brunson-Dargan and Cain; ballots also can be picked up at those schools. You can vote by mailing a paper ballot to the school district offices (120 E. Smith Ave.), by e-mail (audrey.childers@darlington.k12.sc.us), or online (www.darlington.k12.sc.us), Childers said. (See a sample ballot with the continuation of this story inside the newspaper. Paper ballots will also be available at the News & Press office.)
Deadline for balloting is two weeks, Childers said. Votes then will be tallied and results presented to the Darlington County School Board, which has final say on the new school’s name. The board could make a decision as early as October.
By coincidence, the school board had a brief debate Aug. 26 on the issue of whether schools should be named for people, living or dead.
At a work session, the board was going through an inches-thick stack of recommended policy changes from the S.C. School Boards Association. The board has been going through the recommendations one by one for months. Most of them involve minor technical changes on day-to-day issues.
But one of the recommendations advises school boards in the state to wait “at least three years” after a person’s death before naming a “district facility” after him or her. Board members balked at that since it would have a direct impact on naming the new Darlington school and perhaps the new Hartsville and Lamar schools as well.
The board decided to table that recommendation for now. But the debate showed differences of opinion that could influence the board’s final decisions on names for all three new schools in the county.
County Education Superintendent Tim Newman told the board that most S.C. school districts are moving away from naming buildings after people, living or dead.
“As soon as you name it for somebody, somebody else is upset,” Newman said. The Darlington County school board already has a “preferred” policy of naming new schools after geographical areas, but that isn’t mandatory.
Board member Jamie Morphis said that if a district is going to name a school for a person, do it while that person is still alive so he or she can enjoy the recognition. Board member Wanda Hassler had doubts about naming a school for a living person: “I just think there needs to be some reflection time.” She added, “I think there are other ways to honor people.”
Stephanie Bridges, current principal of Brockington Elementary Magnet School, will lead the new Darlington-area elementary school, the district announced Aug. 29.
Bridges has been principal of Brockington Elementary Magnet School in Darlington since 2013, the school district said. Bridges also served as director of the Darlington County Intervention School, as an assistant principal and as a classroom teacher. She also served as an adjunct professor at Miles College (Alabama).
She earned a Bachelor of Arts in English literature from the University of Alabama and a Master of Arts in English literature from Tennessee State University, the school district said. Bridges earned her Educational Leadership Endorsement from Kennesaw State University and her Secondary Certification from Tennessee State University.
“Uniting the two campuses of Cain Elementary and Brunson-Dargan is an opportunity to honor the history and success experienced by both campuses,” Bridges said in a statement from the school district.
