After School Board gets involved, district asks for public input on mascot, colors for newly named school.

Erie is getting a say in shaping the identity of the newly named Erie High School.

In response to the concerns of some School Board members, the Erie School District has launched an online survey to get community input on the proposed colors and mascot for Erie High School, formerly Central Career & Technical School.

The poll, which started late Monday and closes at noon on Thursday, is on the district's Facebook and Twitter pages. The link is also available at www.eriesd.org.

Students had selected the new name, mascot and colors for Central in a vote on May 12, and the school district announced the new name this past Thursday. The district has not publicly disclosed the results of the vote on the mascot and colors, which the district has always said it would reveal at a student rally at Veterans Stadium on June 2.

The rally remains scheduled, and Erie High School will remain the new name, though the district has added another stage to the selection process with the online survey.

The survey is meant to provide public input on the choices for mascot and colors only and is not meant to supersede the students' vote, said Daria Devlin, the district's coordinator of grants and community relations, who helped organize the student vote. She said the district will share the survey results with the school directors.

The board has scheduled a special nonvoting, committee-of-the-whole meeting Thursday at noon at the district administration building, 148 W. 21st St., the office of the board secretary said on Tuesday. The colors and mascot are expected to come up at that meeting.

District officials for weeks had told the School Board that the process of picking a new name, mascot and colors would be student-driven to help create unity as the district undergoes its sweeping reconfiguration, which includes merging East and Strong Vincent high schools at Central, now Erie High School. And the district administration always has said the School Board would get to review the students' picks.

But the district had never intended to create a community poll until May 17, when School Board Vice President John Harkins and some other school directors said, at a nonvoting board meeting, that they wanted the community to have more input in picking the colors and mascot. Other school directors said the students should be allowed to decide, as Superintendent Jay Badams had told them would happen.

"I have to feel good about it in the long term. So do taxpayers and alumni," Harkins said of the colors and mascot. "I don't want to disparage what the students did, but there is also common sense."

Central's mascot was a falcon and its colors black and gold. The mascots and colors for Strong Vincent and East will remain with those schools, which are becoming middle schools.

To pick the name, colors and mascot for the new Central, the 11,500-student Erie School District had a 24-student committee come up with proposals in each category. About 2,500 of the district's ninth-, 10th- and 11th-graders voted on May 12.

The choices for the mascot of Erie High School are storms, titans, royals or centaurs. The proposed color schemes are Carolina blue and gray, Carolina blue and silver, Carolina blue and black, royal purple and gold, or green and gold.

Though the students were at the focus of the vote, Harkins got involved in the process. He proposed Erie High School as one of the possible names, along with the student suggestions of Bayside High School, Erie United High School and Gem City High School. And Harkins also told his fellow school directors on May 17 that he had proposed the centaur as one of the mascots, along with the student suggestion of storms, titans or royals. The district administration added Harkins' proposals to the slate for the student vote.

The centaur — a mythical creature that is half horse and half man — was the mascot of the former Technical Memorial High School, which was built in the 1950s. The school was renamed Central High School through a merger with Academy High School in 1992, and renamed Central Career & Technical School in 2012.

Ed Palattella can be reached at 870-1813 or by email. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/ETNpalattella.