Editorial: The Misplaced Priorities of the WCSU School District

Last Wednesday, the high school advisory agenda consisted of just one simple task: complete WCSU district’s Configuration and Enrollment Working Group’s (CWEG) survey on renaming the district.

On Wednesday night, the Vermont Standard published a feature article regarding WCSU having the 2nd worst school building conditions in the State of Vermont.

These significant events, just hours apart, show the disconnect between the school district and its schools. CWEG’s context for the survey included the concern that Killington is unrepresented in the district because it is not actually in Windsor County. Meanwhile, in the Standard’s article, WCSU Superintendent Sherry Sousa admits that “the middle and high school [building] are of particular concern” and have “major issues”.

Why is there so much focus on something as inconsequential as a district name? I have yet to come across a single high schooler who cares what the name of their school district is, and I believe I’d be hard pressed to find one. Furthermore, the re-naming concerns aren’t consistent; if we worry we aren’t adequately representing the towns where people in our district live, why is there no push to rename Woodstock Union High School, when Woodstock is only one of the 7 towns in our district?

If we’re focused on re-naming things, there is at least one more pressing thing to tackle: the high school’s mascot. Is replacing the word “Windsor” in our district name really more important than changing our mascot, which is an acronym for White Anglo-Saxon Protestants? That seems a lot more offensive to me, and our Instagrams, halls, and logo bear the resemblance of this outdated mascot. Aside from its offensive roots, our mascot is also literally a bug. Why are we represented by a bug?

It certainly appears that the district and its committees lack an understanding of what’s important to the families they serve. As a student, I care about having safe buildings and a mascot that’s representative of the accepting community we attempt to cultivate at school. My guess is that no one in the district values the district’s name more than the safety of its students and teachers who are in the building 5 days a week. Therefore, I hope, as a community, we expend our time and efforts on addressing the safety concerns of our infrastructure more so than the hypothetical need to rename our district which was formed and named just 4 years ago.