It’s now official: New York schools may not have a mascot that in any way references Native American culture.
The state Board of Regents voted unanimously on Tuesday. Mascots, team names, logos or any other symbols will be a thing of the past as of the end of the 2024-25 school year.
As Patch previously reported, the New York Board of Regents had been expected to adopt a regulation fortifying the state Education Department’s 22-year-old rule about school mascots, nicknames and imagery based on indigenous people. In 2001, then-Commissioner of Education Richard Mills said the use of Native American symbols or depictions as mascots could become a barrier to building a safe and nurturing school community and improving academic achievement for all students — and recommended districts change as soon as possible.
School districts now have to formally commit to abiding by the new rule by the end of this school year, according to Newsday. Schools have until the end of the 2024-25 school year to remove Native American references from uniforms, scoreboards, fields and buildings on school property.
Schools that fail to comply with the rule could lose state funding, and officials could lose their jobs, according to the report.
In November, The Associated Press reported that state education officials believed there were about 50 to 60 school districts in New York still using these kinds of mascots.
The guidance could affect several school districts on Long Island: Sachem, Brentwood, Manhasset, Massapequa, Sewanhaka, and Syosset, while in the Hudson Valley it applies to Mahopac and Wappingers. All have been cited in petitions on change.org. Wappingers Superintendent Dwight Bonk told Patch on Friday that the district awaited the regulation. Many of these towns and villages reveal a close identity with indigenous history, as their names suggest.
“Once we receive it, the district will be consulting with our attorneys to consider the steps needed to adhere to the directives,” he said. “We need to find out exactly what they are requiring.”
Some schools have already taken provisional actions in anticipation of this ruling. The Mahopac Board of Education decided in December to only put an “M” on the artificial turf field being replaced, instead of the M plus arrow and feather the district has used for years since it dropped the headdress imagery of the indigenous people of the Plains.
