The Cobb County School District in Georgia, US, has backtracked on a new logo for its East Side Elementary School featuring an eagle design, after parents and local Jewish groups complained it resembled a Nazi “war eagle” symbol.
“The roll-out of this logo has been halted, and we are immediately reviewing needed changes,” the district said in a statement released on Tuesday. “We understand and strongly agree that similarities to Nazi symbolism are unacceptable. Although this design was based on the US Army colonel’s eagle wings, stakeholder input has been and continues to be important to our schools.”
The district added that it would be “immediately reviewing needed changes” to the design.
The offending logo featured a stylized gray eagle with the letters ES contained in a hexagon within its body, along with the school’s founding year 1952 and its location in Marietta, Georgia. The district originally released the images with the explanation that the logo was “chosen to represent the Eagle soaring into excellence and to honor the history of our great school!”
East Side parent Stacy Efrat, who is Jewish, told local media that she wanted to see the school not only ditch the logo but issue a “direct apology to our community. Not just the Jewish community but the entire community.” The school must “immediately apologize and remove” the offending logo, as well as admit its similarity to the Nazi war eagle, she said.
Rabbi and fellow East Side parent Amanda Flaks told local media she was “very hurt on a lot of levels” by the school’s redesigned emblem and called the principal demanding an apology, which she received. The school also sent her images of what East Side Elementary’s newly-minted logo was supposed to be based on.
The Nazi war eagle emblem also features a stylized eagle facing to the right. However, instead of the letters ES inside its body, the bird is gripping a swastika in its talons. The colonel’s wings are slightly more rounded in design than the Nazi version or East Side’s own, with individual feathers and other details not found in the school district’s canceled new symbol.
Cobb County schools have recently seen an uptick in students flirting with Nazi imagery. A group of middle school students were disciplined after they were seen giving fascist salutes and sporting homemade armbands on social media earlier this year. Last year, a student vandalized a bathroom at Pope High School with swastikas and the (misspelled) phrase ‘Hail Hitler.’