[originaltext] SAN FRANCISCO, California (Reuters) --California schools can c

SAN FRANCISCO, California (Reuters) --California schools can continue calling their teams the "Red- skins" after Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger Tuesday vetoed a bill that would have banned the use of the term as racially derogatory.
   The debate over the bill had pitted Democrats, who control the state legislature, against Republican and Democratic representatives from rural districts, where at least five high school teams are called Redskins.
   An earlier version of the bill, which ran into opposition in California’s legislature, would have banned the use of other American Indian nicknames as school team names, including the Chiefs, Braves and Papooses. Schwarzenegger said he vetoed the bill because it would have usurped the authority of local school boards.
   "Decisions regarding athletic teams’ names, nicknames or mascots should be retained at the local level," the Republican governor wrote in his veto message.
   The author of the bill, West Hollywood Democrat Jackie Goldberg said that reasoning was flawed and vowed to press for a ban.
   Goldberg said the term "Redskin" was widely understood as derogatory and harkened back to the earliest days of European colonization when bounties were placed on Native Americans.
   But school officials at Tulare Union High School in Tulare, California, welcomed Schwarzenegger’s veto. The school has used the Redskins name for its teams since 1924.