“While there are many opinions on the matter, our leadership team agreed that, given that Native American members of our community have expressed concerns over the use of the title, we are no longer going to use it.”
In order to "avoid connotation with Native Americans," the San Francisco Unified School District on Wednesday announced that it will no longer use the word "chief" as part of official job titles.
School district spokesperson Gentle Blythe commented on the decision, which affects some 10,000 persons working for the district.
According to the San Francisco Chronicle, Blythe stated in an email:
"While there are many opinions on the matter, our leadership team agreed that, given that Native American members of our community have expressed concerns over the use of the title, we are no longer going to use it."
Blythe did not elaborate, at the time, on which members of the community had "expressed concerns," or when those concerns were expressed.
Blythe's email also stated that, "By changing how we refer to our division heads we are in no way diminishing the indispensable contributions of our district central service leaders," meaning that the actual nature of people's titles is not set to change, just the actual name of the title."
The email also does not indicate which term or phrase will be used to replace the word "chief" either.
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