The federal government is launching a probe into a Long Island school district’s attempts to rebrand its sports team to comply with New York State’s Native American logo ban.
US Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said the feds will probe Connetquot school district after it was revealed officials have been quietly working out a deal with the state to remove its Thunderbirds name.
“New York’s patronizing attitude toward Native Americans must end,” McMahon said. “We will continue to support the Native American community and ensure their heritage is equally protected under the law.”
The Trump administration has blasted the ban as discriminatory, in part because it singles out Native American imagery on logos and in sports team names. McMahon told Connetquot its efforts to cut a deal to rebrand as “T-Birds” could be a violation of Title VI of the federal Civil Rights Act.
Connetquot had sued to keep the use of Thunderbirds in defiance of the state Board of Regents’ ban, which was set in 2023 but is still going into effect.
The school district has allocated a jaw-dropping $23 million to phase out Thunderbirds – name shared with a sports car, an Air Force squadron and a Canadian Hockey League team.
Both the Suffolk County district and the state Education Department had been silently negotiating a deal to contract Thunderbirds to “T-Birds” — a phrase already used at the schools — as opposed to finding a new team name in late June.
That was a turnaround after the state had previously said “T-Birds” was not an acceptable alternative, according to a longtime Connetquot school board member.
“Last month, they wouldn’t allow it…They would not allow T-Birds or any derivative, not even Thunder,” Jaclyn Napolitano-Furno, whose time on the board since 2019 ended in July, previously told The Post.
McMahon was called on by President Trump and toured Massapequa High School in May. There, the team name of the Chiefs had come under siege by the ban — one that can result in state funding cuts and removal of local board members.
She criticized that only Native American team names were under scrutiny, whereas others like the Dutchmen or Huguenots were perfectly acceptable in the eyes of the state.
“The Department of Education has been clear with the state of New York: it is neither legal nor right to prohibit Native American mascots and logos while celebrating European and other cultural imagery in schools,” McMahon added.
“During my recent visit to New York, many individuals in the Native American community express their deep pride in their heritage and local mascots. Images like the Thunderbirds and Chiefs are seen as symbols of strength, honor, and identity – not of disrespect.”
The Native American Guardians Association, which had a handful of its nearly 85,000 nationwide members join McMahon on stage at Massapequa High School, also filed a preliminary injunction against the ban and the Board of Regents last week.
“My clients are tired of it. They’re tired of people pretending to speak for the Native American population — and they’re tired of people trying to erase their history. It’s unconstitutional, and we’re not gonna put up with it,” NAGA attorney Chap Petersen told The Post last week.
“It’s not even a state law. It’s an ordinance,” he said, adding “What they’re doing is they’re trying to erase history…a key piece of American culture.”
Petersen, who filed an additional complaint with the DOE’s Civil Rights office this week, also agreed that the terms being scrutinized have no offensive intent.
“It could be as innocuous as Thunderbirds, and as a result, you could lose your school funding…I just think that people have had it with this.”
