Native American mascots in public Washington State schools banned

Monday, Governor Jay Inslee signed into law House Bill 1356, a ban on public schools in Washington State from “..the inappropriate use of Native American names, symbols, or images as public school mascots, logos, or team names.” The new law will take effect on January 1, 2022. In the statehouse, the vote was 90 to 8, and it passed the state senate 40 to 9. Since the statehouse is currently made up of 57 democrats and 41 Republicans, and the state senate is made up of 28 Democrats, 20 Republicans, and one Democrat that caucuses with the Republicans, I guess this is what bipartisan support looks like.

The new law does come with some exceptions if the enrollment boundaries include a portion of “Indian country,” as defined in 18 U.S.C. Sec 1151, or public schools in a county that contains all or part of a tribal reservation or tribal trust lands. These schools will not have to change their names. Also, a school can consult with the “nearest federally recognized Indian tribe” to try to obtain permission for continued use that must be documented. Schools can continue with their current name this year as long as a new name is selected by December 31, 2021.

There is a plan to create grant money to help schools offset the cost of the name changes that will need to go into effect. However, that money isn’t currently approved and would have to be attached to an omnibus bill by June 30th of this year. So, there is no guarantee at this point that there will be grant money made available. There is language in the bill that states schools will be “incentivized” to select a new name by September 1, 2021, presumably to acquire grant money.

Since our community has recently gone through a mascot name change, I asked Athletic Director Sam Korslund to comment on what the costs might be for a school. Here is his response.

“Thanks for reaching out, and I wish I had a more concrete answer for you on this, but the mascot change we’ve recently done isn’t quite the same thing as what this legislation will require. I’ll do my best to explain the differences:

"One of the immediate expenses of a mascot change is new graphics and artwork.  In our specific case, we had local graphic artists donate their time to create our new logos and artwork, so there was no direct cost for that.  Once that is done, a school would have to address the existing logos and artwork within their facility, such as the gym floor, mats, signage, etc.  In our case, both schools are maintaining their unique identities for everything but our combined sports.  In other words, Dayton students will graduate as Bulldogs, and Waitsburg students will graduate as Cardinals; they will compete in FFA as Bulldogs or Cardinals, etc. It is only when we combine for sports that we are the Wolfpack.

"As far as uniforms, a few teams have already received new uniforms with the “DW” logo we had been using while conducting a mascot search, so we will now be prioritizing those who are still using either Dayton or Waitsburg uniforms.  We’ll be purchasing new uniforms with the Wolfpack logo. Still, even that cost and the cost of uniforms already purchased with the “DW” logo is somewhat absorbed in the fact we would have needed new uniforms regardless of a mascot change.  Other schools will undoubtedly find themselves in this situation as well but will have the burden of replacing all team uniforms at once, where we have already replaced some and so are now replacing the rest.

"Every school district needing to make a change will also incur the cost of employee hours spent conducting surveys on new mascot ideas, student votes, and other aspects of the selection process for the new mascot.  We did experience that here, but I have no real way of quantifying that overall cost.  I do know we were also able to rely upon volunteer hours for much of this effort as both of our communities are so supportive of our students that many people turned out to create this combined opportunity and make it a success.”