Name This School

The Norfolk School Committee plans to solicit names for the new elementary school that is to replace Freeman-Centennial School.

The School Committee got a re­quest from the architects that school officials come up with a name now so that it can be included on design plans and so designers can figure out how big the area on the building for the name needs to be.

But School Committee members decided to put off a final decision for a while, to allow opportunity for sug­gestions. Beth Gilbert, chairman of the School Committee, suggested that elementary school students could be asked to write essays in support of a particular name.

“I think it could be a really neat exercise,” Gilbert said during the School Committee meeting this past Wednesday night. School Committee member Ross Gilleland noted that many elemen­tary school students have trouble envisioning the new school, but that it will be easier once it is under con­struction. “I think next year it will be more meaningful,” Gilleland said.

Freeman-Centennial School de­rives its name in part from the origi­nal 1950 building, which was known as the A.J. Freeman School, after a longtime town resident and School Committee member. The Centennial portion of the building was built in 1970, the 100th anniversary (or cen­tennial year) of the town’s founding. “So I think a lot of the feeling is this is kind of now a long and rather complicated name. Now that we’re going to replace that building with one building, it might be a good time to try to make that a little more handy for everyday use,” Gilbert said.

One member of the audience sug­gested that school officials should hesitate before changing the name of a building that honors a past member of the community. “But the other suggestion that the committee has already received, the building committee had received, was to name the school in honor of Ser­geant Adam Kennedy,” Gilbert said. “Those kinds of discussions sort of have informally occurred. But what we want to do it to start this process.” Kennedy, who grew up in Norfolk and went to Freeman-Centennial, was a United States Army sergeant who was killed in Iraq on April 8, 2006.

Gilbert said she also has con­sidered the possibility of simply reverting to the former name of the current elementary school on Boardman Street. “Personally I was thinking about the notion that we could just name the school the A.J. Freeman School, because it al­ways was the Freeman School, and then we sort of had the hy­brid name, but now if we have one building …” Gilbert said. School Committee member John Olivieri said the Freeman-Centennial name ought to be commemorated even if it is no longer used for the school once the buildings are demolished. “Don’t sell the old plaques, no matter what decision we made. We’ll mount them somewhere in recognition of their past service,” Olivieri said.