AUSTIN, Texas — Fulmore Middle School is now officially Sarah Lively Middle School, named after a teacher that spent nearly half a century with the school.
For the 2019-2020 school year, five AISD schools will have new names because they were originally named after people with ties to the Confederacy. In 2016, Austin renamed Robert E. Lee Elementary School to Russell Lee Elementary School.
Fulmore Middle School is now Sarah Beth Lively Middle School. John H. Reagan High School is now Northeast Early College High School. Sidney Lanier High School is Juan Navarro High School. John T. Allan Facility is Anita Ferrales Coy Facility. Albert Sidney Johnston High School is now Eastside Memorial Early College High School.
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The middle school campus was named after Zachary Taylor Fulmore, a Travis County judge and trustee for the Texas School for the Blind – and a member of the Confederate Army.
Sarah Lively spent almost 50 years at Fulmore, teaching for 25 years and volunteering daily for almost two more decades. Lively said it caught her off guard when she found out she could even be an option as a school name.
"It's not anything you think about or imagine," Lively said. "I did what I did because I loved it, and I enjoyed it here. I have a teacher friend who said I was pretty successful because I am an eighth grader."
Lively also worked at the University of Texas at Austin but she knew she wanted to work with middle schoolers.
"I had 10 years at UT working with faculty, but it wasn't what I wanted," Lively said. "So I came to Fulmore as a substitute. I said to Frank Lively [her husband], 'I know what I want to do the rest of my life, and I know exactly where I'm going to do it.'"
Lively was a part of nearly 100 options the school district decided between.
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