ESCONDIDO -- A Bear Valley Middle School parent is questioning a decade-old district tradition where eighth-grade students dress up and dance in an annual Confederate-Union Ball, saying that the activity is offensive and historically inaccurate.

Kym Atkins, whose daughter Erin is a seventh-grader at Bear Valley, said this week that she is upset about the ball because it is insensitive to the feelings of black students and it overlooks the fact that their ancestors, as slaves, would not have been allowed to participate in such an event.

"As an African-American, who has an African-American child, I am trying to understand the historical context of a ball that celebrates the Confederates," Atkins said in a telephone conversation this week. "My child is black. If they are recreating history, my child wouldn't be allowed to go to something like this."

School officials have countered that the ball is only one activity meant to reinforce a monthlong study of the American Civil War, Reconstruction, slavery and other topics of the time.

Eighth-grade students at both Bear Valley and Rincon Middle School, which sits in north Escondido on the opposite side of town, have been taking part in the balls since 1997, they said. Before Bear Valley opened in 2004, the event was held at the kindergarten-through-eighth-grade L.R. Green School.

Bear Valley Principal Julie Rich said that students and parents look forward to the tradition each year, when boys dressed in Confederate and Union uniforms and girls dressed in lacy ball gowns get to dance the waltz and the Virginia reel, and practice their manners.

This year's ball at Bear Valley is being hosted on two separate nights. About 200 students danced the night away Friday and the rest will have their after-school dance at 6:30 p.m. May 30.

"This is an activity where the kids can understand what daily life was about," Rich said, equating it to the school's Renaissance Fair held for seventh-graders. "They study the clothing, the food, dance, and all the things that were going on culturally."

The ball is not an exact re-enactment of history, though, she added. The opposing Union and Confederate soldiers would never have come together for a dance. They encourage students to represent both sides, and hang replicas of the Confederate and Union flags, and pictures of both sides' commanding generals -- Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant -- to remain unbiased, she said.

Still, Atkins and other parents have said recently that they can see how the ball could make some black students and families uncomfortable. Atkins and her husband, Mark, an elementary school principal in Poway, have asked that the event be canceled or, at the very least, renamed.

"It's unfortunate that a parent feels like that, but I'm not really surprised," said Anna Rabbani, the president of the school's Parent Teacher Organization. "I am still surprised that they (hold the ball)."

Rabbani said that while she enjoyed having two of her sons participate in the ball and thought that it provided them with an interesting perspective on the period, she could empathize with Atkins and how she might have felt if her ancestors were slaves.

Rabbani said that she has heard other parents raise similar questions and concerns. Last year, she said, one black student even came dressed as a slave.

Other than the Atkinses, though, Rich said no other parents had called her to ask for the ball to be ended or the name to be changed. At Rincon, Principal Jon Centofranchi said they had one black student opt out of the activity for the first time this year.

"She took objection to the event itself," Centofranchi said of the boy's mother. "She didn't go into details with us why. We told her we understood, and we accept her family's wishes."

Contact staff writer Shayna Chabner at (760) 740-5416 or schabner@nctimes.com.