The NYS Education Department is requiring FCSD and all NYS schools to remove Native American references and imagery from district logos and icons. A stakeholder advisory committee has been formed to assist the district in selecting a new icon.
At this point, the following decisions have been made by the advisory committee:
FCSD will keep its current colors of red (primary) and green (secondary) due to their importance within community history and heritage.
As per NYS mandate, FCSD will not be keeping the "Red Raiders" name. Within state guidelines, "Raiders" is no longer permissible, even with changed visual elements.
Our first community survey solicited over 1200 community ideas. The advisory committee then used this data to select three top candidates based on frequency of suggestion and committee criteria.
Committee Criteria
The committee evaluated community responses under the criteria that the new icon must:
Represent the entire student body
Acknowledge and honor our local history and school traditions
Promote school pride
Respect our entire community and reflect FCSD values/standards
Translate to identifiable branding and align with school colors
The stakeholder advisory committee will use the input from this survey to narrow the selection down to the final two.
The advisory committee will then present the final two options to the student body by means of the student culture teams for review, discussion and presentation.
Students will then vote between the final two, with the advisory committee bringing the final selection to the FCSD Board of Education for approval.