Detroit school board member wants Ben Carson name off high school

DETROIT (WJBK) - Before he was a member of the Trump administration, Dr. Ben Carson was a well-known and respected pediatric neurosurgeon.

But Carson's political views are making some people angry. Detroit Public Schools Community District school board member Lamar Lemmons is proposing changing the name of Ben Carson High School.

"I am personally going to put forth the motion to change the name," he said.

The board decided Tuesday it will no longer name schools after people still alive - and it can now rename buildings that are.

"Before the story is complete, sometimes people do things that are embarrassing," Lemmons said. 

Like comparing Universal Healthcare to America's original sin.

"Obama Care is really, I think, the worst thing to happen in this nation since slavery," Carson said in a previous speech.

Or:

"There were other immigrants who came here on the bottom of slave ships, worked even longer, even harder for less," Carson said.

And:

"Recently he came to Detroit and went to a public housing unit," Lemmons said. "And (he) said since when did they start living this good?'"

Those gaffes coupled with the fact Carson is President Trump's Housing and Urban Development secretary left a sour taste in Lemmons' mouth.

"He's admitted that he has no experience or knowledge of housing," Lemmons said.

But he says it's not merely political but about self-determination. Former DPS Emergency Financial Manager Robert Bobb renamed the school in question, not an elected school board.

"That's one of the things that people do in Colonial systems, they come in and they change your names," Lemmons said.

Lemmons will make a motion that the board vote on the issue during the next meeting, Feb. 13. School board President Dr. Ivy Taylor says the board has yet to discuss the criteria for changing a school's name.

Lemmons says he wants the state to foot the bill for the name change being that EFM Robert Bobb renamed this high school. If the board approves it, the school could have a new name by the start of the 2018-2019 school year.

Lemmons said he would like the name to go back to Crockett for Dr. George Crockett and his wife Dr. Ethylene Crockett - the first black woman in the state of Michigan to focus on gynecology.