PANEL LOOKS AT NAME GAME

Shakespeare asked, "What's in a name?"

Apparently quite a lot when it comes to naming a new school building.

The Cape Girardeau Board of Education will consider a policy change that could allow its newest elementary building to be named after a living person.

The board meets at 6 p.m. tonight in the cafeteria at Central Junior High School. Members are expected to approve the policy change.

Current board policy requires that a person be dead for at least three years before their name can be considered for a building.

Some questions arose last month about the district's naming policy when an ad hoc committee solicited names for the new elementary building. It is still under construction at the intersection of Sprigg and Bertling streets.

Some of the suggested names were people who are still living, but under current policy could not have been considered.

The board suspended any action by the committee until the current policy was reviewed. And the suggested changes "are what the board asked for," said Assistant Superintendent David Giles.

Giles and the Rev. William Bird head up the 11-member ad hoc school naming committee, whose goal is to submit three names to the board.

It has been Giles responsibility to keep track of all the suggested names. The list has 46 names so far, and that includes those suggested through letters to the editor or Speak Out comments in the Southeast Missourian, Giles said.

Of those 46 entries, only three are names of people still living in the city, Giles said. Former school administrator and current city councilman Melvin Gateley is among them.

"We have both the inanimate and the animate," Giles said.

Some suggestions include Capaha Elementary, North Cape Elementary and North Sprigg Elementary. Others have more literary, historic or political significance, Giles said.

But there wouldn't be anything wrong with something plain like Cape Girardeau Elementary School. "I don't see why not," Giles said.

Traditionally, the district has named the majority of its school buildings for former district teachers or principals -- May Greene, Alma Schrader, L.J. Schultz among them.

The last building to be renamed was Hawthorn School in 1991. It was named after its first principal Charles C. Clippard, who is serving on the ad hoc committee.

If the board changes its current policy, which was adopted in 1992, the committee will get new instructions and continue with its work.

The school naming committee meets Friday. "I'd like to say we could finish then, but I'm not really sure," Giles said.