Column: There’s nothing difficult about changing a school’s name

For those who think changing the name of a school in Hawaii is complicated and hard … it is not.

On Sept. 17, without fanfare, the Hawaii Board of Education (BOE) voted to change the name of Central Middle School. It went into effect immediately! When students and faculty returned to school on Monday, Sept. 20, their school had a new name — Princess Ruth Ke‘elikolani Middle School. The signage, stationery, etc., will take some time to catch up, but for all intents and purposes, the school has a new name.

This decisive action by the BOE is very encouraging to those who have been advocating for years to have the name of President William McKinley High School changed back to Honolulu High School.

Interestingly, the two schools share the same historical origin.

They both started as the Fort Street English Day School, which was founded in 1865 at a church on Fort Street in Honolulu. In November 1869, Princess Ruth Ke‘elikolani offered to house the Fort Street English Day School at her palace, Keoua Hale, where the middle school is still located today.

In 1895 the upper grades became Kula Kiekie o Honolulu, commonly called Honolulu High School. In 1907 Honolulu High School was renamed President William McKinley High School (by annexationists who hijacked the school system and used it to erase Hawaii’s history and purge Hawaiian national identity). That year, the school was moved to the corner of Beretania and Victoria streets, facing Admiral Thomas Square.

In 1923, McKinley High School was relocated a block away to its present location on King Street. The Beretania-Victoria site became Linekona (Lincoln) School — and today is the Honolulu Museum of Art School.

Meanwhile, the lower grades of the Fort Street English Day School that remained at Keoua Hale, Princess Ruth’s Palace, became known as Central Grammar School, then changed briefly to Ke‘elikolani School. But in 1928, because “the name was hard to pronounce” (the excuse given by those who hijacked the school system), it was changed to Central Junior High School, which morphed into Central Intermediate School in 1932, then Central Middle School in 1997.

Central Middle School and McKinley High School have been inexorably joined from inception. It is only appropriate that both names be changed for the sake of reflecting their heritage and correcting historical misrepresentations.

Ironically, the point where the situations of the two schools differ is their names. While the name Central Middle School is rather innocuous and harmless, the name President William McKinley High School is highly charged and an affront to history and many Hawaiians.

President William McKinley is to many Hawaiians what Confederate leaders such as Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis are to many Americans today. They were celebrated and honored for well over a century as great American heroes, until people came to realize what those men’s actions represented and the lasting damage they caused.

It’s a shame that even though President McKinley is now clearly seen as disgraceful, many McKinley alumni adamantly cling to the “McKinley” name — no matter how many innocent people were and continue to be injured and killed (like right now, in Afghanistan) by the foreign policies McKinley initiated with the unlawful annexation of Hawaii.

Hopefully, history and common decency will prevail — and the unfortunate name “President William McKinley High School” will soon be changed into something more befitting of the outstanding reputation of the school and accomplishments of its students and faculty.

It is also hoped that the statue of McKinley holding a fake annexation document will be removed.

Leon K. Siu, of Aiea, is a Hawaiian national, musician, diplomat and advocate for the reinstatement of the Hawaiian Kingdom.