The Boston School Committee on Wednesday night voted to rename a Dorchester high school after civil rights leader Ruth Batson.
The committee members unanimously supported renaming the Boston Community Leadership Academy/McCormack 7-12 School after Batson, who battled for decades against school segregation and for the educational rights of Black students.
“Ruth Batson was just such a deep community member and did so much for our schools with tireless advocacy,” said Superintendent Mary Skipper. “This is, to me, an honor, for us to be able to put forward.”
The school’s governing board voted in June 2023 to adopt the name Ruth Batson Academy, following surveys and meetings with staff, students and other community members, according to school and district leaders.
Batson was the first woman elected president of the NAACP’s New England Regional Conference and also served as chairwoman of the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination from 1963 to 1966. In the 1960s, Batson, a graduate of Girls’ Latin School, challenged the Boston School Committee on its practices of segregating Black students, especially in assigning them to inadequate school facilities.
Batson also helped to launch the Metco program, a voluntary school integration program that enrolled Boston residents in suburban public schools. Metco, which started with 220 students in 1966, now enrolls thousands of Boston and Springfield students. She also led the Museum of African American History and launched an educational foundation that gave hundreds of thousands of dollars in scholarships, grants to a health center, and other gifts.
The renaming, meant to help create a joined identity for the merged BCLA and McCormack communities, comes as the school is due to get a new or expanded campus in Dorchester, after the School Committee voted last month to seek construction funds from the state. The BCLA/McCormack is currently split between sites in Hyde Park and Dorchester, after the district merged the McCormack Middle School and the Boston Community Leadership Academy in 2021 as part of its plan to eliminate standalone middle schools.
The city also recently announced an agreement with the University of Massachusetts Boston to give students at the school access to college coursework and a pathway to enrollment after graduation; expanding the school would allow more students to make use of that partnership.
The school serves about 570 students, of whom 61 percent are Latino and 28 percent are Black.
Christopher Huffaker can be reached at christopher.huffaker@globe.com. Follow him @huffakingit.