A Long Island school board will decide Tuesday whether to keep a contentious Native American nickname, which many local residents have said they don’t want to see go.
The Connetquot school district, which has been taken to court by New York State officials who want them to ditch their current name, Thunderbirds, must decide if they will accept a compromise with the state that would shorten the name to “T-Birds.”
“We’ve never had a complaint [about the name] before this all started,” board member and Thunderbirds supporter Jacquelyn DiLorenzo told The Post. “People are proud of it, you see it at any of our games and in the stands.”
State officials had been trying to completely erase the Thunderbird name, but changed to accept the compromise moniker only after the Trump administration launched an effort to protect Native American school nicknames.
“The state denied it several times. Not just once or twice,” recently retired board member Jaquelyn Napolitano-Furno, who served six years until this July, told The Post.
The current Thunderbird name got strong support from people who responded to a series of community surveys in the Suffolk County district.
“They are disregarding the community,” DiLorenzo said of the board mulling the deal.
She previously blasted her colleagues as “corrupt” in front of parents for orchestrating the compromise internally rather than through a public input meeting. Thunderbird supporters like Napolitano-Furno agree.
The district, while battling on the surface to retain the name, also quietly allocated $23 million for rebranding.
Opponents of the compromise, like DiLorenzo, can’t understand how the state can think the Thunderbirds name is offensive, but T-birds is ok.
New York only altered course to OK T-Birds after Education Secretary Linda McMahon intervened and found the ban to be a Title VI Civil Rights violation for targeting a single ethnicity. She also referred the investigation to the Department of Justice in June.
“Now all of a sudden, the state’s willing to make a deal with us,” added Napolitano-Furno.
The pro-Trump group Native American Guardians Association also sent a recent letter to the district, urging Connetquot to keep the name as it is “far from being derogatory.”
“Compliance with this regulation is not ‘progress’; it is cultural censorship and systemic racism,” added the group, which joined McMahon at the Chiefs’ home of Massapequa High School in May, where she announced Title VI findings.
NAGA would definitely sue the district should the deal be inked, according to attorney Oliver Roberts, who represents the group, Napolitano-Furno, and Massapequa in related logo litigation targeted at New York.
Both the US DOE and the DOJ could also take legal action against the district, he added.
“Why are we swapping out one lawsuit for possibly two more?” said DiLorenzo.
“It is going to probably cost more money for the community.”
Dirty bird
McMahon recently told The Post in a statement that the issue for Connetquot and other teams, such as the Massapequa Chiefs, remains a “top priority” for the feds.
DiLorenzo also said Board President Marrisol Mallon was wrong when she claimed that the name settlement does not violate Title six because there was a court ruling that said so. DiLorenzo said there was no such ruling.
Mallon claimed she “asked our legal team about” the supposed Title VI ruling while at the meeting.
Massapequa School Board President Kerry Wachter also blasted Mallon’s recent assertions.
“It’s hard to understand how someone can make such an obviously false claim and expect it not to be challenged.”
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