HISD to take a first step in changing all of district’s Confederate-linked school names.

Board to take first step in changing all Confederate-linked monikers

The Houston school board will take the first step Thursday toward renaming campuses with monikers tied to the Confederacy.

The trustees plan to start the process with a vote to revise the district’s policy to state explicitly that names should be non-discriminatory. The revised policy also details how the board can initiate renaming schools.

Board president Rhonda Skillern-Jones said this week that after the policy gains approval, she will propose renaming at least six schools named after Confederate leaders or loyalists.

In June, state Sen. Rodney Ellis, D-Houston, called on the Houston Independent School District to rename six campuses following the shooting deaths of nine black churchgoers by an alleged white supremacist in Charleston, S.C. Ellis mentioned campuses including Davis, Lee and Reagan high schools and Dowling, Jackson and Johnston middle schools.

Alumni have expressed mixed reactions.

Renaming is expected to come with a cost — for new logos, school uniforms, marquees. The estimated price tag was $250,000 in 2013 when HISD changed the Confederate-linked Rebels mascot and three others deemed offensive to Native Americans.

To rename a school after a living person, HISD’s proposed policy would require a unanimous vote from the school board. A simple majority would suffice for names after the deceased.

The proposed policy also allows the district to accept donations for naming rights to all or part of a school. The superintendent would be required to develop guidelines, and accepting the funds would take a two-thirds majority vote.

At least 188 public schools nationwide were named after prominent Confederate leaders or places as of a few years ago, according to an analysis of federal education data by the media website Vocativ.

The Charleston shooting set off a national debate over Confederate symbols. In July, the Confederate flag was removed from the grounds of the South Carolina statehouse.

In late August, the University of Texas removed a statute of Jefferson Davis, the Confederate president, from the main mall to be housed in a museum on the campus. The Sons of Confederate Veterans tried to block the move, but a state district judge gave UT the go-ahead.

“I’m pleased to see the HISD board move in this direction,” Ellis said in a statement Wednesday. “As an extremely diverse school district in the most diverse city in the nation, the names of our community schools should not lionize men who dedicated themselves to maintaining the ability of one human to own another.”