MOSES LAKE — Chief Moses Middle School will become Columbia Middle School at the beginning of the 2022-23 school year, and the mascot will be changed from the Braves to the Red Hawks. Moses Lake School Board members unanimously approved the recommendation of a district committee at the regular meeting Thursday.
Jeremy O’Neil, the district’s chief operating officer, said the process of renaming CMMS took a little longer than choosing new mascots for Moses Lake High School and Frontier Middle School.
“There’s been an ongoing process many months in the making,” O’Neil said. “The impetus being, our partners at the (Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation) said that we needed to make some changes, and we’ve done that with the high school and Frontier. The wrinkle with Chief Moses Middle School is that the school name also needed to be addressed.”
Former Frontier Middle School and Moses Lake High School teacher and coach Greg Kittrell presented the committee’s recommendation to the board.
Kittrell said the committee deliberated and came up with three options for the new school name and three for the mascot. They then put the options to a vote.
“For the name of the school, Columbia Middle School, or Sunrise Middle School or Desert Lake Middle School. Those are our three choices, with Columbia Middle School way out in front of everything else,” Kittrell said.
Coming up with a mascot was slightly more challenging, he said.
“The mascot was a little different — a very tight vote among the three. The Red Hawk was the top vote-getter,” Kittrell said.
The remaining options for the mascot were Coyotes or Mustangs.
The need for the mascot and name changes come after legislation was passed in Olympia requiring any school or other public entity using a term from indigenous culture to request permission from the nearest tribal authority to continue using the name. Earlier this year, the twelve tribes of the Colville reservation put out a blanket response indicating they felt the use of native terms was inappropriate and harmful to Native American youth.
