The Ceres Unified School District board of trustees decided last week that it will enter a “listening phase” to gauge the public’s thoughts on renaming Cesar Chavez Junior High School.
According to CUSD Deputy Superintendent Dan Pangrazio, the district would return to the board on May 7 with a summary of the input. The board has the option to keep the name or rename it, and if so, decide the process to come up with a new name.
Trustee Cynthia Ruiz made the motion to approve the community outreach study which was seconded by trustee Valli Wigt. The board was unanimous in their support.
Pangrazio said CUSD Board Policy allows for the renaming of schools or facilities “under extraordinary circumstances and after thorough study.”
Listening sessions are scheduled as follows:
Wednesday, April 22, 5 p.m. at the Cesar Chavez JHS cafeteria;
Thursday, April 23, at 10:30 a.m. at the Cesar Chavez JHS cafeteria;
Community Sessions
Thursday, April 23, 5:30 p.m. at the CUSD Board Room, 2503 Lawrence St.
Friday, April 24, 9:30 a.m. at the Argus Multipurpose Rooms 32/33, 2503 Lawrence Street;
Wednesday, May 6, 9 a.m., CUSD Board Room, 2503 Lawrence St., Ceres
Additional information is available on our webpage at https://www.ceres.k12.ca.us/article/2826879.
The renewed talk of renaming the school has produced some recommendations from the community that have included locals former mayor Louis Arrollo, late scout leader Ray Baltz, former CUSD teacher and superintendent Scott Siegel, Sid Long Sr., Wayne Salter and Marine Lance Cpl. Juana Navarro who was killed in Iraq in 2006.
Attending Thursday’s meeting was Bill Caruso who suggested the board rename the school after Baltz.
Caruso said Baltz deserves to be recognized for “all he did” for decades in Ceres.
“No offense, but I doubt if any of you knew who he was at all,” said Caruso. “He was my eighth grade shop teacher here at Walter White. Later he became principal at Westport (School). He also started his own shop class after school and he also paid for the lumber out of his own pocket.”
Caruso said Baltz contributed so much for the Ceres community as a teacher and Boy Scout troop master. In the summer months Baltz also took care of the swimming pool at the high school where he also served as a lifeguard.
Baltz also served as Ceres scoutmaster for the Boy Scouts for 35 years.
“He was a great guy and very well known in the community and I and others feel he should be recognized one of these days,” commented Caruso.
A number of school districts are in the process of removing Chavez’s name after UFW labor union legend Dolores Huerta revealed that the late farm labor union founder sexually assaulted and got her pregnant twice.
Huerta made the shocking claim after the New York Times published the claims of former United Farm Workers (UFW) workers Ana Murguia and Debra Rojas who say they were sexually abused by Chavez as teens. Both told the Times that they remained silent for decades for fear of “tarnishing the image of a man who has become the face of the Latino civil rights movement, his image on school murals and his birthday a state holiday in California.”
Huerta, who birthed 11 or 13 children from four different men in her life, publicly revealed that she was sexually abused by Chavez, which resulted in two of her children, a secret she kept for 60 years to protect the farmworker movement. She gave up the two children to adoptive families.
Huerta said that the formerly revered UFW founder Chavez sexually abused her as a young woman and decided to speak out after Murguia and Rojas told the Times that Chavez sexually abused them over a five-year period in the 1970s, beginning when they were 12 and 13.
When asked why she kept her secret so long, Huerta said she “believed that exposing the truth would hurt the farmworker movement I have spent my entire life fighting for.”
On Instagram Huerta wrote: “As a young mother in the 1960s, I experienced two separate sexual encounters with Cesar. The first time I was manipulated and pressured into having sex with him, and I didn’t feel I could say no because he was someone that I admired, my boss and the leader of the movement I had already devoted years of my life to. The second time I was forced, against my will, and in an environment where I felt trapped.
“I had experienced abuse and sexual violence before, and I convinced myself these were incidents that I had to endure alone and in secret. Both sexual encounters with Cesar led to pregnancies. I chose to keep my pregnancies secret and, after the children were born, I arranged for them to be raised by other families that could give them stable lives.”
In 2009 the CUSD Board of Trustees chose the name of Cesar Chavez for the new junior high school in east Ceres. It was a controversial choice given CUSD’s policy of naming schools after local figures who contributed to education in Ceres.
