A cash-strapped Texas school district where teachers turn to the web to raise money for basic supplies incurred an unexpected expense this year: $1.2 million to change the names of eight schools that previously honored Confederate leaders.
(FOX)- The Houston Independent School District, which enters the fiscal year with a $95 million deficit, voted last spring to strip the schools of the names of Confederate generals Robert E. Lee, Albert Sidney Johnston and Stonewall Jackson; Confederate President Jefferson Davis; Confederate Postmaster General John H. Reagan and Confederate soldiers Dick Dowling and Sidney Lanier.
“We have a school district that is broke — without libraries and in desperate need of repair — yet we’re going to spend $1.2 million to re-name these schools?” said Wayne Dolcefino, president of a communications firm hired by parents and families opposed to the re-naming. “At the end of the day, if we can’t figure out that every penny we have should be spent to prepare our children for the future rather than litigating what people did 150 years ago . . . we’re in trouble.”
Among the changes, Lee High School was renamed for longtime Houston educator Margaret Wisdom and Jackson Middle School was named for Hispanic community activist Yolanda Black Navarro. The changes were made in time for the Aug. 22 start of the new school year.
In addition to the Houston schools, two buildings in Austin and Dallas shed rebel-linked names in time for the school year, leaving at least 24 that still bear the names of Confederates, according to The Associated Press.
In Houston, some of the opposition, from both parents and teachers who spoke to FoxNews.com on the condition of anonymity, was not based on the merits, but simply the expense. The school district has faced cuts in administrative and tutoring positions as it grapples with the yawning budget gap.