Ahead of the start of a new academic year, one middle school in the Orange County Schools district is finished with its name change.

Orange Middle School, which changed its name from C.W. Stanford Middle School this summer, is nearly finished updating its campus to fit the new name and school colors as students prepare to return for classes on Monday, August 23.

Families in the Orange Middle community voted whether to keep the Chargers mascot during this new phase of the school and also decided on a new logo. At the Orange County Schools Board of Education meeting Monday night, district leadership revealed the new logo for the middle school, which features a charging horse instead of the previous knight on horseback of C.W. Stanford Middle School. The school’s leadership also chose for the school colors to now be orange with silver accents instead of royal blue and yellow.

Deputy Superintendent of Operations Patrick Abele, who recently transitioned back to a role with Orange County after working in the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Schools system, detailed other changes Orange Middle’s campus is undergoing at Monday’s meeting.

“The main marquee at the road is being updated and will be completed by August 16th,” he said. “There’s still some blue [on campus] that will be repainted, but you’ll start to see orange and silver appearing very soon.”

Abele also said temporary signs within the school reading “Orange Middle” are being hung and a medallion in the auditorium will need some additional time to be removed. For athletics, the scoreboards are expected to be updated by October, but the deputy superintendent said the gym floor may not be changed until the winter.

“[Contractors] need about seven days to complete that work,” said Abele, “and so we weren’t able to get them on the schedule to get that completed before school starts. But we do promise the staff and community we will have that gym floor redone over the holiday break in December.”

The Orange County Schools Board of Education voted to change the school’s name to Orange Middle in June after review of the district’s building names. Some community members said the namesake of C.W. Stanford, who was a 1950s and 1960s-era school board leader, did not do enough to swiftly enact desegregation of schools following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in 1954 of Brown v. Board of Education. Cameron Park Elementary School was also renamed to River Park Elementary School as part of the same review of existing school namesakes.

The Orange County Schools Board of Education also approved several Health and Safety guidelines for the upcoming school year Monday night, including a universal masking policy. The full meeting of the school board can be watched here.

 

Photo via Orange Middle School.

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