Despite no vote planned to decide the next mascot, more than 30 Sandusky School District residents squeezed themselves into the board of education room last night, applauding on several who spoke to the board during public comment.
Several people, such as Ivan Henderson, pointed out that this had been an ongoing topic since the 1980s, when he was president of the athletics booster at Sandusky. Back then, he said, Superintendent Jim Nolan was determined to change it, but the threat of no support from the athletic boosters was enough to make him back down. “We just pretended it wasn’t happening and it went away,” he said, expressing confusion and anger at the decision to change the mascot coming back, saying many alumni at the past weekend’s Thumb Festival class reunion were against the change.
Furthermore, residents had heard a rumor that there was no funding after all, which went against the board’s resolution to change the mascot without dipping much, if at all, into the school’s general fund. Board President Susan Dreyer clarified, as the board only learned that past week that the school would not receive the grant this year to fund the change due to not being far along enough in the process– however, they have the chance to reapply once they are further along, with the grant focused on reimbursement for expenses incurred while the change is being made. At present, she says, to take down and just remove the necessary items, the school would need to pay $15,000, an amount that the board is still determining how to pay.
Still, it wasn’t out of “woke-ism” that the change was made, Dreyer also said, answering resident Troy Tank’s question of why the process started again to begin with.
With publications like MLive, the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post highlighting Sandusky’s mascot, the school district had run into issues and negative assumptions at conferences and with school partnerships. Still, some residents insist that the board should put it on a ballot and put it up to the community to vote, with others asking that, if the change must be made, to re-do the mascot nomination process, as many residents don’t believe that Sandusky should be the Knights, Ravens or Storm, with none of the three aligning with the “from Michigan” criteria of the original nomination requirements.
The Sandusky Board of Education voted 6-1 during the April board meeting to officially retire the mascot at the end of the ’21-’22 school year.
