Your assignment: Help district name new school
By Bobby Bryant, Editor, editor@newsandpress.net
If you have an idea for what to call the new elementary school being built in Darlington, now’s the time to share it with the school district.
Through April 7, district officials will be taking suggestions from the community on a name for the new school that will replace both Cain Elementary at 607 1st St. and Brunson-Dargan Elementary at 400 Wells St. That new facility, being built at the Cain site, opens in 2020.
Once community members send in suggestions through a variety of methods (more on that later), the school district will compile the possible names and allow “everyone – community, parents, students and staff” – the chance to vote for the name they like best.
A committee will gather the results and give the county school board a manageable list of choices; the board will pick a final name in May.
At a work session March 25, the school board noted that they’re not just deciding on a name for the Darlington school, but also laying down a system for naming two other new schools being built in the county, one in Hartsville and one in Lamar.
“Whatever we decide to do in Darlington, it’s going to ricochet,” said board member Connell Delaine, since the method for naming the Darlington school will become the pattern for naming the others.
The board has been expecting the Darlington school to be the toughest case among the three, since it’s replacing two schools named for well-known educators.
Cain was named for James Lawrence Cain (1870-1944), remembered as a pioneering black educator and longtime Mayo School principal. Brunson-Dargan was named for Susannah Woods Brunson (1872-1958), a St. John’s principal, and Margaret Keith Dargan (1876-1967), a St. John’s teacher and grammar-school principal.
The school district has already begun receiving early suggestions for naming the new Darlington school, and some of them mix and match those educators’ names.
Some early ideas for the new school’s name include J.L. Cain Elementary, Cain Brunson Dargan Elementary, Cain-Dargan Elementary, CainDar Elementary, DarCain Elementary, Darlington Early Learning Academy, Darlington Elementary, Darlington Elementary School of Innovation, Dreamgate Elementary, Eastside Academy, Eastside Elementary, First Street Elementary, Harmony Elementary, Innovation Academy School and Innovative Elementary.
Other suggested names that have come in so far propose naming the school for entirely different area residents:
C.C. Wearing Elementary, Little Willie J. Gee Elementary, Willie E. Boyd Elementary and Terrence Carraway Elementary. (Boyd was an educator and school district official. Carraway was a police officer killed in a Florence ambush attack on several officers in October.)
The school district has already received some feedback as well on a possible mascot for the new Darlington school. Parents, teachers, Cain students and Brunson-Dargan students all seem to be leaning heavily toward a tiger as mascot. Other options were an eagle, a bear and a hawk.
If you want to suggest a name for the new Darlington school, you have several ways to do that. You can mail or deliver a completed “suggestion form” (you should be seeing those around) to the Darlington County School District Office of Communications at 120 E. Smith Avenue, Darlington. You can also call the district’s Office of Communications at 843-398-2284.
Or you can fax your suggestion to 843-398-5254 (include name and address). Or bring a completed “suggestion form” to the main offices of either Cain Elementary or Brunson-Dargan Elementary. Lastly, you can e-mail a name suggestion to audrey.childers@darlington.k12.sc.us (include name and address).