People Upset That Houston Spent Money To Change Confederate School Names

[struggle4progress]

SEPTEMBER 7, 2016
by DAN SOLOMON

... Houston Independent School District, meanwhile, voted to rename seven schools .. named after Robert E. Lee, Albert Sidney Johnston, Stonewall Jackson, John Reagan, Richard Dowling, Sidney Lanier, and Jefferson Davis. The decision was made in May, and the schools were renamed after people like teacher Margaret Long Wisdom and community leader Yolanda Black Navarro ...

The cost of rebranding the schools comes in at $1,256,197 ... In June, Houston ISD approved a budget of $1.8 billion, which means that the cost of renaming and rebranding the schools amounts to 0.067 percent of the budget. A million dollars is still a million dollars, but it’s also more like a rounding error ...

The politics of HISD are complicated, though. People were similarly incensed at the $250,000 the school district spent in 2014 to rename school mascots like “Redskins,” “Indians,” “Warriors,” and “Rebels” in favor of names without offensive or racially charged implications. Meanwhile, Texas law requires the school district to send $162 million to the state, where it’s redistributed to schools in areas with lower property values ...

http://www.texasmonthly.com/the-daily-post/people-upset-houston-spent-money-change-names-schools-named-confederates/

[Igel]

1. It's partly the money.

Partly the renaming.

And partly that the board didn't talk about the expense and, when they had numbers, didn't bother to share them. It looked mostly cost-free until after some people challenged the board and forced them to divulge the apparently secret numbers.