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SANTA FE — César Chavez’s name was painted over on the sign overlooking the soccer field as students headed out on spring break.

Santa Fe Public School District’s south-side elementary school is one of many institutions to strike the name of the ����������ϼ� Farm Workers union leader and civil rights activist this month following allegations Chavez sexually assaulted multiple girls in the 1960s and ‘70s, according to a New York Times investigation.

In the unanimous vote to remove the name Thursday, the district’s board chose a neutral appellation, “White Tigers Elementary School,” after the school’s mascot, to adorn the sign temporarily while a permanent name is chosen.

That process could take time, said SFPS Board President Kate Noble, who said the district is discussing social justice education about Chavez’s complex legacy for an area of Santa Fe home to a sizeable immigrant population.

“That’s the hope,” she said, “that there will be an explanation of a movement made up of many people, including Dolores Huerta and many others, that was very important for millions of people — what that movement was about and even some of the complicated things around individual heroes, if you will.”

Huerta, who co-founded the ����������ϼ� Farm Workers union and became a prominent civil rights icon in her own right, told the Times that Chavez pressured her into one sexual encounter and raped her in a separate incident in the 1960s, impregnating her both times.

Huerta’s statements galvanized years of allegations by women who claimed Chavez sexually abused them, prompting communities across the U.S. to reassess the legacy tied to the name.

Significant discussion preceded the vote to rename the Santa Fe school at last week’s board meeting. One speaker during public comment advocated for a “social justice and cultural education center.”

“Instead of reducing the conversation to the name of a building, we want to offer something more meaningful,” Miguel Acosta said. “Create a social justice and cultural education center at César Chavez that could be a resource for the entire district, a place where students and community can learn about the farmworker movement, raza organizing, ongoing work of social justice and communities — a place for youth learning, for dialogue, for youth leadership, something living and not just symbolic.”

Noble said the district plans “really strong community engagement” with students, families and faculty to identify a new name using a “many doors approach,” including emails, text messages and in-person conversations to source input and educate students.

The district maintains administrative requirements that outline the process for naming its institutions, allowing it to name schools, for example, for people, but only if they are deceased.

“But I can tell you that, personally, I would prefer to not name it for a person,” Noble said, adding that District 4 school board member Roman Abeyta, in whose district the school falls, would spearhead the renaming process.

At last Thursday’s school board meeting, Abeyta said that process presented an opportunity “to address some of the issues that have been plaguing the south side for years and years.”

He said coming to terms with the mounting evidence of Chavez’s history of sexual abuse, often against underage girls, has been difficult. In his childhood home, Abeyta said the civil rights icon was seen as “the Martin Luther King of the Chicanos, of the people.”

His family even boycotted grapes, one of the agricultural commodities for which workers in the 1960s and ‘70s were paid low wages Chavez and fellow union leaders helped increase.

“This is a real opportunity for even myself to learn more,” he said.

John Miller is the ����������ϼ�’s northern New Mexico correspondent. He can be reached at jmiller@abqjournal.com.