PICKETTS CORNERS — Out with the Chiefs, in with the Spartans.

After more than a month of voting and plenty of different name ideas, the Saranac Central School District announced on Monday that it will now call itself the Saranac Spartans.

The name was decided through a voting contest that garnered a total of 2,650 votes.

“I was excited that it was that high,” SCSD Superintendent Javier Perez said. “That certainly tells us that not only was our student body involved but our community was involved as well.”

After the final tally, the Spartans received 1,461 votes, while the “Wolves” name had 1,189. Perez said the student body had been excited about the voting process.

“When we were down to the Wolves and Spartans, I think the high school end was really pushing the Spartans,” Perez said. “But I think the interesting thing was that when I would get the elementary numbers, they were a bit high on the Wolves. That’s what would drive them closer to potentially winning.”

The school whittled down the top two contenders from a list of possibilities, including Scarlet Knights, Sabers, Stars, Bucks, Bears, Scorpions, Mountaineers and Red Hawks.

The process of choosing a new name was decided by a vote, similar to Saranac Lake’s mascot name change in 2001, but unlike Saranac Lake’s voting process in 2001, which tallied the votes from the students, the Saranac Central school district had a community-wide voting process.

“We really focused on setting up a process that would really involve the entire community and everybody that wanted to be involved,” Perez said. “I think we certainly accomplished that.”

The decision to change the mascot was made in April after the state Board of Regents required schools to change mascot names referring to Indigenous people unless permitted by a recognized tribe.

In a letter to the school community this past April, Perez said the district could lose approximately $14 million in state aid it’s expecting to receive in the next fiscal year if the Chiefs name wasn’t changed. The district’s total proposed budget for 2023-24 is $40.4 million, meaning if the state aid is withheld, the district would have lost roughly a third of its projected revenue.

Last month, Massena Central School District changed its mascot name from the “Red Raiders” to just the “Raiders” after an agreement was worked out between the Massena Central School District and St. Regis Mohawk Tribe to comply with a state Education Department directive.

Even though the Saranac Central school district removed its Indigenous iconography in its logo — a tribal chief with a headdress — in 2002 and replaced it with the image of a mountain and stars, Perez said the school district chose not reach out to a recognized tribe.

“We knew there were some negative feelings about that already in this area,” he said. “We made the decision to take the information the state gave us and to move forward.”

While the decision hasn’t been meet with a unanimously positive response from the Saranac community, Perez said it was the right choice.

“I think in the end if there is a community out there that is offended by something we do,” he said, “we certainly want to rectify that.”

The name “Spartans” will become official on July 1 — the start of the new school year, according to Perez.

“We want to start rebranding ourselves,” he said. “Our new mascot, our new logo. We’re working with a company to provide us with some examples of potential logos.”

Perez made it clear that the school would still use its red and white colors, but he was unsure whether there would be a vote on a new logo. He along with a school committee, which has orchestrated the mascot name voting process, is currently working with a company to see how many logos will be provided to them.

“My hope is that there are at least two that we are very excited about,” he said. “If that’s the case then I would potentially put those two out to vote.”