(Education Week) For generations, fans have hailed Jack C. Hays High School's sports teams with the "Dixie" fight song and rallied around its "Rebel" mascot, even as other schools neighboring the Buda, Texas, community yielded to concerns that such branding was racially divisive.
But in the aftermath of a racially motivated church shooting in Charleston, S.C., this summer, in which nine African-Americans were killed, the Hays Consolidated Independent School District retired the Confederate anthem, citing its potential to divide or offend students and the community.
