The Prince George’s County Public Schools system is weighing renaming a school that bares Cesar Chavez’s name following sexual abuse, grooming and rape allegations against the civil rights icon.

The New York Times released an investigation on Wednesday spotlighting two women who allege Chavez, who cofounded the National Farm Workers Association, sexually assaulted or raped them when they were girls as their parents participated in the movement. One of Chavez’s cofounders, Dolores Huerta, also accused him of sexual abusing, raping and impregnating her.

The exposé was published just weeks before Cesar Chavez Day, which is celebrated nationally on his birthday, March 31, and pushed people across the country to reckon with this new blemish on Chavez’s legacy. Some states have canceled or prohibited celebrations and considered changing the holiday’s name. Buildings and schools named in his honor — including César Chávez Dual Spanish Immersion in Chillum — have reevaluated.

“PGCPS is a culturally responsive district that strives to ensure our school environments and names reflect our core values of social justice and respect for all individuals,” school officials said in a statement.

Per policy, if the district moves forward with renaming the school, the first step would be to form a naming committee consisting of two citizens, two parents, two students and two staff members, officials said. Then a separate naming commission would evaluate the committee’s suggestions.

The last steps would be the superintendent recommending the final choices to the board of education, which would then select and approve the new name. As recently as 2023, Adelphi Middle School was renamed Sonia Sotomayor Middle School in honor of the first Latina and third woman to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court.

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César Chávez Dual Spanish Immersion is an elementary school that encourages bilingualism and biliteracy through Spanish immersion and English for speakers of other languages courses. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, the school served 355 students last academic year. Most of them were Hispanic.

Many families are processing a range of emotions following the news, Ian Fay, the president of the school’s Parent Teacher Organization, said in an email. The PTO was saddened to learn this news and is focusing on supporting the families and staff, Fay said.

Though talks of renaming the school have started among parents, Fay said it’s not a conversation they can “responsibly rush.”

“The financial and logistical demands of an official renaming would, at this moment, divert critical resources away from the families who need them most,” Fay said. “The heart of this school has never lived in a name. It lives in the teachers who show up every day, the families who pour love into this community, and the children who walk these halls full of potential.”

Chavez is revered as “one of the most inspirational labor leaders of the 20th century‚” according to the AFL-CIO. As cofounder of the National Farm Workers Association, Chavez led strikes and marches throughout the 1960s and ’70s. He pushed for a minimum wage, unemployment insurance and California’s 1975 Agricultural Labor Relations Act. That’s also when these women allege their abuse happened.

Chavez died in 1993, and former President Bill Clinton posthumously awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom the following year. In addition to the holiday, there’s a national monument in California in Chavez’s honor.