HISD to rename 3 schools
Named after men linked to the Confederacy, campuses join four others slated for change
A split Houston school board voted Thursday to order the renaming of three more campuses named after men tied to the Confederacy.
The hourslong debate brought out accusations of racism, questions about historical legacy and concerns about the cost — an estimated $250,000 per campus.
The action followed efforts that began last year after the slaying of nine South Carolina church parishoners, and several speakers noted that it came in the middle of Black History Month.
The new campuses to be renamed, joining four others approved on split votes in January, are Albert Sidney Johnston and Sidney Lanier middle schools and Jefferson Davis High School. John- ston was a high-ranking Confederate general, Lanier was a Confederate soldier and poet, and Davis was president of the Confederacy.
Nearly all the votes were along racial lines, with the black and Hispanic board members voting in favor of the name changes.
Committees at each school now are charged with proposing new names by May.
Supportive of the changes, James Douglas, president of the NAACP of Houston, told the school board about a recent conversation he had
with a younger AfricanAmerican about the Confederacy and the naming debate.
“Where would you be today if they had won?” Douglas asked. “I said, ‘Do you feel proud having to go into a school that honors a person who intended to keep you in slavery?’”
A few dozen speakers — parents, students and community members — expressed mixed views. Some agreed the names sent the wrong message, while those supportive of keeping Lanier’s name said he was a young, lowlevel soldier who redeemed himself as a writer. Others questioned the price tag as the district faces a projected $107 million budget shortfall.
Renaming all eight campuses — Reagan High School is expected to come before the board again — would cost an estimated $2 million, based on district figures.
“I’ll take dignity over dollars,” said trustee Rhonda Skillern-Jones, who led the effort last year to change the district’s policy to allow the board to order renaming. The move followed the shooting deaths last June at a historic black church in Charleston, S.C.
Trustee Jolanda Jones, whose district includes Lanier Middle School, said the name changing issue was “personal” to her. “Slave masters were not nice to us. Slave masters raped us,” she said.
“I find it incredibly interesting, incredibly inter- esting, that the majority of people that are proud of Sidney Lanier are white,” added Jones, who is black. “I am offended that when black people talk about slavery and the vestiges, that people want us to get over it.”
Trustees voted in January to rename Henry Grady, Richard Dowling and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson middle schools and Lee High School. They postponed a decision on the other campuses to seek input at community meetings.
Reports from the meetings at Johnston, Lanier and Davis said that most speakers opposed the name changes.
In another split decision, the board voted 5-4 to ban specialty schools from having teams in the University Interscholastic League, the entity that governs competitive high school athletics in Texas.
The change means that Carnegie Vanguard High School, a magnet school for gifted students, would lose its UIL teams in 201718. The campus is the district’s only specialty school with UIL teams.
Students at specialty schools — which lack attendance zones and instead draw transfers — would be allowed to play at the campus to which they are zoned.
Supporters of the change said it was unfair to let Carnegie Vanguard remain an exception when principals at other specialty schools also want to participate in UIL.
ericka.mellon@chron.com twitter.com/e_mellon