PALO ALTO, Calif. – Lars Johnsson isn’t typically interested in his son’s school work, but a recent assignment taught him a few things.

Johnsson told NBC Bay Area he was spontaneously interested in his son’s 7^th grade book assignment at Jordan Middle School, and discovered the school’s namesake, Stanford University founder David Starr Jordan, was an outspoken eugenicist – someone who believes in promoting reproduction of certain traits or races over others.

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The lesson was detailed in his 13-year-old son Kobi Johnsson’s report “David Starr Jordan: The ugliness behind the make-up,” but Johnsson now wants to bury Jordan’s legacy – as a eugenicist, educational leader, ichthyologist, and pacifist – to shield future students at the school from the unpleasant aspects of his life.

“I couldn’t believe what I was reading about the eugenics and racist aspects in David Starr Jordan’s history,” Johnsson told the San Jose Mercury News. “The more I looked, the worse it got: He was an early and lifelong leader of the movement.”

“He was a lifelong leader of white supremacy and eugenics was his tool for his vision,” he told NBC Bay Area.

But instead of pushing for more lessons like the one he and his son learned about Jordan into the school’s curriculum, and using his legacy as an example of the complicated intersections of racism and eugenics and education, Johnsson simply wants to erase Jordan’s name from the building.

“It is an educational institution and is meant to reflect the 21st century values we have in Palo Alto,” he said of Jordan Middle School. “To David Starr Jordan it was very obvious that only the white race is intelligent and that the fact that you’re not white you cannot be intelligent…that is so contrary to what we believe in, what the school district preaches, the achievement gap we’re trying to work on, that he clearly is the wrong role model just for that belief.”

Johnsson launched a Change.org petition to pressure the Palo Alto Unified School District Board of Education into forming a citizen advisory committee to review a name change and recommend proper “role models.”

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The page currently has just over 300 signatures, including endorsements from several parent groups. The superintendent, Max McGee, told Palo Alto Online on Monday that the school board agreed to discuss a potential name change after the New Year.

“I think he makes a case worthy of discussion at the board level,” McGee told the Mercury News. “This conversation may not be an easy one to have but it’s one the board is willing to have.”

A citizens advisory committee would review the factors involved, and make a recommendation. There would also be a public hearing before any change, he said.

Parents are already speaking up about the effort online.

“I happily sign this petition because we are a five generation Palo Alto family that has had 3 generations of children at Jordan without realizing who Jordan was,” Jordan parent Nan Dame posted in the Change.org comments. “The most current generation being in school now. We have to let our children know we are not tolerant of any form of racism and do not honor those who would perpetuate, in any way, racism or lack of respect for everyone.”

Multiple news sites noted that several other California schools are also named after Jordan, including high schools in Los Angeles and Long Beach, and a middle school in Burbank. Palo Alto’s Terman Middle School is also named after eugenicist researcher Lewis Terman, McGee said.

Johnsson’s name changing efforts follow a flood of similar petitions involving schools across the country in the wake of racially charged incidents.

Nathan Bedford Forrest High in Florida was changed to Westside High in 2014 after a petition with 140,000 signatures highlighted the Confederate Army general’s involvement with the Klu Klux Klan, Palo Alto Online reports.

Members of a South Carolina school board this week opted against renaming Robert E. Lee High School over criticism about Lee’s slave ownership, according to NBC Bay Area.

The Associated Press reported yesterday that students at Lebanon Valley College want to rename Lynch Hall – named after Clyde A. Lynch, who served as college president for nearly two decades – because the word “lynch” has “racial overtones.”