Lexington’s Carter G. Woodson prep academy is getting a new name. Here’s why.

On Monday, Lexington’s Carter G. Woodson Preparatory Academy will either be renamed the George Washington Carver STEM Academy for Boys or the Henry Boyd STEM Academy for Boys.

Soraya Matthews, chief of Fayette diversity, equity, inclusion & belonging, said both recommendations were made by the Fayette Public Schools Equity Council.

Carver is a Black American scientist who died in the 1940’s. Boyd was a Black Kentucky native whose career was rooted in STEM — Science, Technology, Engineering and Math, Matthews said.

Fayette County Public Schools’ first all-boys STEM elementary school launched in the summer of 2021 for the 2021-2022 school year.

At the time of launch, the school was named after a current all-boys program within the district, Carter G. Woodson Academy, which serves middle and high school students.

Through listening sessions with community partners, families, faith-based leaders and district staff, it was determined that the school’s current name, Carter G. Woodson Preparatory Academy, created a misperception for families looking to enroll their students in the school for various reasons, school board documents said.

“It needed to (be) rebranded ... and have a new name ... for it to be all that it can be,” Rosalyn Akins, a woman who worked on the vision for the new school, said at a November school board meeting.

She said when Fayette schools were desegregated it was under the promise that when new schools were reopened, they would be named after segregated schools that closed such as Booker T. Washington, Dunbar, Douglass and George Washington Carver.

All have been renamed except for Carver, Akins said, supporting that new name.

“You will fulfill a 40-year promise that was made in 1972,” she told Fayette school board members in November.

To create consistency in messaging, understanding and marketing efforts, a new name aligned with a prominent individual in the STEM field will set the school on its intended path and vision of serving our community as an authentic STEM school for boys, a school board document said.

The name change is expected to come at Monday night’s school board meeting.

Akins said there is still a need for another new elementary school fashioned after the successful Carter G. Woodson High School. She said that new elementary school would need a new building.