Table of Contents
ALEXANDRIA, Va. - Alexandria City Public Schools dedicated the media center at Naomi L. Brooks Elementary School as the Jean B. Reid Media Center on Tuesday, one of four facility namings the School Board approved in December.
The ceremony was held at the school at 600 Russell Road, with School Board member Michelle Rief, Acting Superintendent Grace Taylor, and Reid's family and friends among those attending. ACPS described it as the third of the four ceremonies. It was the first held under Taylor, who became acting superintendent in August.
Reid worked as a reading specialist for ACPS from 1971 until she retired in 2001, teaching and holding leadership positions at several schools across the division. The division scheduled the dedication for International Literacy Day, and said afterward that it was fitting to mark her legacy in a room where students will keep reading and learning for years to come.
A process that ran most of a school year
The naming came out of a community petition process the division ran during the 2025-26 school year under School Board Policy FFA. Petitioners for each of the four sites gathered at least 100 signatures, and the proposals then went to community polling in October and November 2025, a public hearing in December and a board vote.
More than 1,400 people responded to the November poll. Only one of the four names, Owen's Place at the Early Childhood Center, drew clear majority support at 75%. The Reid proposal took 50.1%, ahead of a competing proposal to name the media center for Karl F. Smith at 30.1%, with 19.7% preferring no name at all.
Then-Superintendent Melanie Kay-Wyatt recommended in December that only Owen's Place move forward, citing the narrow polling margins on the other three and the cost of signage. Thirteen speakers came to the Dec. 11 public hearing, most of them urging the board to approve all four. Former City Councilman Lonnie Rich told the board that deferral makes decisions no easier. John Porter, the longtime T.C. Williams principal, offered to help supporters offset the signage costs to the division.
The board approved all four on Dec. 18.
The other three
The courtyard at the Early Childhood Center was dedicated as Owen's Place on June 2, honoring Owen Michael Wagner, the late son of the center's first principal. The athletic fields at Alexandria City High School's Minnie Howard Campus were dedicated Sept. 1 in honor of former Mayor Kerry J. Donley, who served from 1996 to 2003 and later as athletic director at what was then T.C. Williams. He died in July 2022.
ACPS has not announced a date for the fourth, at Parker-Gray Stadium. That proposal, honoring 1990 T.C. Williams graduate and 13-season NFL linebacker Keith Burns, was the closest of the four in polling, edging a write-in campaign for Sgt. DeForest L. Talbert, a 2001 graduate killed in Iraq, by 17 votes. More than one in five respondents preferred leaving that field unnamed, the highest share among the four sites, with some citing the historic significance of Parker-Gray, the segregated school that served Alexandria's Black students from 1920 until integration. The stadium itself keeps the Parker-Gray name.
Ryan Belmore is an Alexandria resident and the founder and publisher of The Alexandria Brief. Send tips, feedback, and story ideas to ryan@alexandriabrief.com.
