In November 2020, the Alexandria City School Board will make a decision around the names of T.C. Williams High School and Matthew Maury Elementary School.

Thomas Chambliss Williams, who was the superintendent of ACPS from the mid 1930s until 1963, resisted desegregation and argued that Black and white students learned differently and should remain in separate schools.

Matthew Maury was an oceanographer who served the Confederacy. He helped oversee Virginia's military preparations and resistance to the Union, including improving the effectiveness of underwater torpedoes or mines. Matthew Maury Elementary School was named after him in the 1920s, as part of a movement to create an image of the war as a heroic narrative and justify the South’s loss.

ACPS is critically aware that there is a pressing need in our schools, our community and our nation to find ways to talk about race constructively and respectfully. One of the ways that we can move forward is by acknowledging our own history, while refusing to allow that history to define who we currently are as a school division in the present.

Make sure your voice is heard durng this process by joining an engagement session or taking the survey.

To help inform the School Board’s decision, please take 1-2 minutes to share your views with us by completing this very brief survey. The survey will close on October 28 at 11:59 p.m.