The Salomeja Nėries and Sofijas Kovalevskaja gymnasiums in the capital applied to the Vilnius City Municipality, requesting decisions on changing their names.
"We will have a meeting of the Historical Memory Commission next week and we will consider changing the names of two schools. There will be changes to the names of Vilnius Salomejas Nėries and Vilnius Sofijas Kovalevskaja gymnasiums," Eltai said Vilnius city municipalities Kamilė Šeraitė-Gogelienė, chairperson of the Historical Memory Commission.
According to the politician, both schools applied to the municipality on their own to change their names.
"We have no leverage not to consider their appeals. And then, after our commission, the decisions will go to the council on February 28," she said, noting that educational institutions also proposed options for how they would like to be renamed.
Salomejas Neries Gymnasium offers four options for changing the name of the institution: Vilnius Media Gymnasium, Vilnius Saint Kotrynas Gymnasium, Vilnius Old Town Gymnasium and Vilnius Old Town Media Gymnasium.
At that time, the educational institution proposed to change the name of Vilnius Sofia Kovalevskaja Gymnasium to Vilnius Capital Gymnasium.
Discussions about changing the name of Vilnius Salomejas Nėries school in the public space have been going on for some time. The school's management had previously spoken about the intention to change the name of the educational institution.
ELTA reminds that the decommunization law entered into force in Lithuania on May 2023, 1. It is applied in any form to persons, symbols, information that are immortalized or depicted, promoting totalitarian, authoritarian regimes and their ideologies.
The law adopted by the Seimas in December 2022 also provides for the removal of symbols of totalitarianism and authoritarianism from public spaces - monuments, other memorial objects, names of streets, squares and other public objects.
LGGRTC and municipal institutions are expected to recognize public objects as propagating totalitarian, authoritarian regimes and their ideologies.
Gailė Jaruševičiūtė-Mockuvienė (ELTA)
