By Betsy Kline, Castlegar News contributor
The field of names for the unnamed Rossland public school has been narrowed to three.
A delegation from the Rossland Secondary School Renaming Committee, led by Rossland school principal Karen Lavender, explained to the School District 20 board of trustees on Feb. 24 the 10 names on the short list had been cut to three.
Lavender said they wanted a name that would represent the community, reflect that the school was a public school, would be familiar, realistic, connected and easy to say.
After much public input the committee has narrowed the list down to three names to present to the board. The first two choices being equal in preference were: Rossland Summit Public School and Rossland Summit School. The third choice was Rossland Public School.
“We want it to reflect the new configuration as a K-9 school,” she told the board.
The former Rossland Secondary School—which now houses kindergarten to Grade 9 students—was in need of a new moniker after School District 20 chose to severe the senior grades from the facility and ship the students to Trail last year.
When the committee of eight was formed in October the call went out to the public for some ideas on what to call the school. Several hundred submissions were collected through ballot boxes at the library, the credit union and other places downtown, as well as online.
A total of 48 unique names were collected by the committee from Dec. 1 to Jan. 15.
The criteria for the new name were as follows: Reflects the current grade configuration; reflects that the school is a public school; allows for future configurations changes (kindergarten to Grade 7, kindergarten to Grade 12); has similar ring/familiarity to RSS; is realistic for the community (all segments of the community are comfortable with the name); is connected to the Rossland community culture (history, arts, outdoor, etc); and is easy for people of all ages to say.