Grady High School students will vote this week on what their school’s new name should be.
The Atlanta school board had been poised to decide on a new name at a meeting earlier this month but paused to give students time to weigh in.
The electronic poll opened Monday and will close Friday.
Students can rank three proposed names: Ida B. Wells High School, Midtown High School, or Piedmont High School.
A committee appointed by the school board chairman last spring had recommended that the school be renamed after Wells, a civil rights activist and Black journalist who died in 1931. Four of the committee’s seven members had favored the name.
That recommendation upset some who said the committee disregarded an earlier electronic survey that showed more people favored Midtown as the school’s new name.
Those critics launched an online petition aimed at convincing the school board to reject the Wells' recommendation. The board agreed to postpone its decision to allow time for a student vote. The board is expected to approve a new name on Dec. 7, after it has results from the students' vote.
The committee previously determined that the school should be renamed because Grady, a managing editor of The Atlanta Constitution who died in 1889, held racist views.
