By JOSEPH B. NADEAU

WOONSOCKET — Proposals are surfacing for the naming of the city’s schools but members of the School Committee say they like things as they are.

The sentiment surfaced again on Wednesday when School Superintendent Robert J. Gerardi Jr. asked the panel if it wanted to move forward with setting up a subcommittee to consider the option.
Sandra Oppenheim, daughter of the late Edward O. Boucher, a former school committee member and committee chairman, recently began campaigning to have his name given to at least one the city’s two new middle schools under construction off Hamlet Avenue and the panel has already been asked to consider selling the school’s naming rights to raise cash for its current budget crisis.
Oppenheim said last week that she already has over 130 signatures in favor honoring her father, a four-term member of the committee and longtime city attorney who also served as a local probate judge and bail commissioner. Boucher, who had also been elected a state representative as a local Republican while just 25, died March 13 at the age of 70.
Despite the ongoing community discussions, Gerardi said no official action has been taken by the committee on naming the new schools and asked the panel members if they wished to create a naming subcommittee to formally weigh the options.
School Committeewoman Anita McGuire Forcier responded that she was “not comfortable naming the schools for any person still living,” but did believe the decision should be made jointly by the elected officials on both the School Committee and the City Council. An added question to consider would be the period of time the name selected would remain with the building, according to Forcier.
School Committeewoman Linda Majewski said she did not believe the schools should be named for a particular person in light of the role the community as a whole played in approving their construction.
 There had been a previous proposal to rename Woonsocket High School in
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honor of Rhode Island education benefactor Allen Shawn Feinstein for a donation to the district but no one at the time wanted the high school named anything but Woonsocket High School, she said.
 People do “serve their community well,” Majewski said while adding she would certainly be agreeable to a school field or wing of a building being sponsored in someone’s name.
  There is also the option of creating a scholarship at the schools to keep a loved one’s memory alive through a legacy of helping students in their post secondary school endeavors, according to Majewski.
“The cost of higher education continues to rise and a Pell grant doesn’t go very far today, if you can even get one,” she said.
 There are two recently constructed elementary schools named for city notables – the former city Mayor and Rhode Island Governor Aram J. Pothier and also city industrialist and Abraham Lincoln friend Edward Harris. But School Committeewoman Eleanor Nadeau said those names had been assigned to the historic schools the new buildings at Robinson Street and High School had replaced.
  The building committee is currently attempting to find a way to renovate two small historic buildings at the new school complex and Nadeau suggested a role in that effort could be a more acceptable opportunity to recognize a person contributing to city.
 School Committee Chairman Marc A. Dubois said at the moment there doesn’t appear to be a need for such a study panel since no one on the panel seemed in favor of naming the schools after anyone. Forcier suggested the school officials speak with the Council about the issue but the discussion ended without any action by the committee.