HOUSTON – The Houston Independent School District expects to spend at least $1.2 million to rename seven schools with ties to the Confederacy.

HISD interim superintendent Ken Huewitt divulged the staggering cost on Monday in response to a lawsuit filed against the district by parents upset about the change, and said he will request that the school board approve the expense at a meeting Thursday, the Houston Chronicle reports.

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Several taxpayers sued HISD in June over the board’s decision to rename seven schools named in honor of Confederate heroes, primarily because officials did not share the expected cost with locals. A school board agenda item on the renaming initially listed the cost as “none,” but a later vote to approve the new names listed the “general fund – fund balance” as the funding source and did not give an expected cost, the lawsuit alleges.

The school board essentially “endorsed a blank check from the general fund to pay the hidden costs,” according to the lawsuit.

Angry parents rallied outside of HISD headquarters Wednesday to plead their case to the public, KPRC reports.

“Quit spending my money on things the people really don’t want,” an elderly gentleman shouted.

“Each name should be separate. Each cost should be separate, with the estimates to prove what it’s going to cost,” said a woman protestor.

“They need to spend the money on the special education kids,” another mother said. “They need to give us who lost our jobs back our jobs.”

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Another woman summed up the parents’ concerns:

We need to sit down and focus as a city and we need to say, ‘You know what, board, let’s focus on the children. Stop focusing on yourself. Stop focusing on what’s not important. And start focusing on the children. And the only way you’re going to do that is if you start spending money on kids, and not buildings and not things that we don’t need.

District officials, meanwhile, seem to be simply going through the motions to help their legal case, and have not addressed concerns about costs, other than a stale statement about the ongoing lawsuit.

Interim superintendent Huewitt told the Chronicle that the disclosure of the $1.2 million name change estimate “basically addresses the matter that was brought forward to the courts.”

According to a HISD statement, posted to KPRC:

“By their nature, the costs associated with renaming the schools are not known precisely when the decisions were made. These are refined over time and HISD administration has presented updated information since before it was served with the lawsuit and will continue to do so in the future.  The court has heard oral argument and testimony over two days in this lawsuit. The parties are submitting briefs to the court this week and next and anticipate a decision soon after.

“The remedy sought by the parties in the lawsuit was to overturn the renaming of the schools. That is clear in their pleadings and in their responses to the Judge’s questions in open court. HISD is confident that the estimates provided in the past and in the future do not affect the validity of the Board’s action to rename the schools, which it occurred during public meetings this past spring.”