Plan to Rename School Sparks Furor : Santa Paula: Proposal to call campus after a Latino would be a district first. Foes want longtime principal honored instead.

Except for Glen City School, every elementary school in Santa Paula is named after a prominent local citizen--all of whom happen to be white.

Noting that the majority of the city is Latino, longtime Santa Paula resident and activist Bob Borrego proposed to the school district last month that the lone holdout, Glen City School, be renamed in honor of Joe Bravo. A former mayor who served for many years as principal at two other Santa Paula elementary schools, Bravo, a Latino, is currently a school board trustee.

But some residents say Borrego’s proposal, a topic of debate among many of the town’s 25,000 residents, has ignited old racial tensions between Latinos, who make up about 60% of Santa Paula’s population, and whites.

Because Bravo never worked at Glen City, some residents say, the district shouldn’t name the school after him. But if the name is changed, they suggest calling it Dorothy Pinkerton School, after a longtime resident who was Glen City’s principal from the school’s inception in 1952 until she retired in 1974.

“Dorothy Pinkerton was there for all these years, and she made that school what it is today,” said Marjorie G. Hudson, a former teacher in the district. “This man had nothing to do with the school. I think it’s a terrible slap in the face to Dorothy Pinkerton.”

But Bravo supporters insist that it is high time the district show students that Latinos, too, are worthy of having schools named after them. Recently, Glen City was designated the district’s bilingual, multicultural magnet school.

“I look at it as a recognition for his past accomplishments and as a role-model issue for our youth,” said Laura Espinosa, a 20-year Santa Paula resident.

Intent on taking their cause before the Santa Paula Elementary School District board, residents on both sides have bombarded trustees with phone calls lobbying either for Pinkerton or Bravo. Residents have also flooded the local paper with emotional letters. The board has yet to formally consider the issue.

Borrego admits that he’s a bit overwhelmed by the furor.

“I thought it would be very proper, very appropriate,” he said. “The guy’s been a real neat, clean, All-American kind of guy. Why do they resent it so much?”

Bravo, 75, said that for now he’d prefer not to discuss the matter in detail. But, he added: “Of course, it’s always an honor to be named for anything.”

And Pinkerton, who has been dragged reluctantly into the center of the conflict, said she’d rather the name just stay the way it is.

“It has a nice sound to it,” said Pinkerton, who said she is in her 80s.

Aside from sounding pleasant to the ear, the name Glen City has historic significance, longtime residents say. It commemorates Santa Paula’s former name, decades back, when people referred to it as “the glen city” before it was formally called Santa Paula.

“Let’s keep some of the heritage there,” said Ray Gonzales, a Santa Paula resident who said he opposes naming the school after Bravo because of philosophical differences between the two.

Some Pinkerton supporters say the proposal appears to be racially motivated.

“I can’t see any other reason for this change other than the minority angle,” said Elizabeth Blanchard, a former school board member who years ago married into a family after whom one of the town’s schools is named. “Our schools have enough problems without trying to do that kind of thing.”

Some of the town’s Latino residents, however, note that schools in the city have been renamed before without any of the rancor surrounding the latest proposal.

“It’s just kind of odd,” Borrego said. “When I approached the school board, I hoped this would be done quietly like all the other school dedications.”

Borrego said the last thing he ever meant to do was offend or embarrass Pinkerton.

“I don’t know Dorothy Pinkerton; I don’t know a thing about her,” he said. “I’m just saying to these people, ‘Where have you been for the last 20 years? I just brought this up, and where have you been?’ ”