Students At Union Public Schools To Vote On New Mascot

Union Public Schools students will start voting on a new mascot for the school district.

The district says the community was heavily involved in the decision-making.

After looking through 320 mascot ideas, it's come down to two choices: the Redhawks or the Bison, and administrators say it is a pretty close race.

This comes after the district announced its plans to change the Redskins mascot name they've had for 75 years.

The first step of the voting process is for students in grades 4 thorugh 12 to vote on the new name first.

Once the name is decided, students will then vote on the new mascot design, which will be the new symbol for Union.

The district says more than 9,000 people, including students and alumni, participated in a thought exchange for a new mascot.

Through that, they found the Redhawks have a slight 2-1 ratio lead over the Bison.

Union Public Schools says it was extremely encouraging to see so many people care about the school district.

"We've even had people that don't even have necessarily a connection to Union that are keenly interested in this," Union Public Schools Chief Communication Officer Chris Payne said. "I had thought this is going to be an internal thing, but...you would just be surprised at how many people are interested."

Voting will be going on until October 22nd. The results will be posted that following week.